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GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 
AND SOME OF ITS DISCIPLES 



GREEK AND ROMAN 

STOICISM AND SOME 

OF ITS DISCIPLES 

EPICTETUS • SENECA AND 
MARCUS AURELIUS 



BY <y 

CHAS. H. STANLEY DAVIS M.D., Ph.D. 

AUTHOR OF A HISTORY OF EGYPT • EDITOR AND COMMENTA- 
TOR OF THE EGYPTIAN BOOK OF THE DEAD • MEMBER 
OF THE SOCIETE' D'ANTHROPOLOGIE OF PARIS 
THE ROYAL ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE 
OF GREAT BRITAIN • THE AMERI- 
CAN ORIENTAL SOCIETY 
ETC., ETC. 






BOSTON 

HERBERT B. TURNER & CO. 

MCMIII 



Copyright, 1903, by 
Herbert B. Turner & Co. 



Entered at Stationers' Hall 



the library of 
congress, 

Two Copies Received 

JAN 26 1903 

R Copyright Entry 

CUASS CU XXc. No 

COPY B. 



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* 






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1 € t « 

4 I I I « 



Printed by Carl H. Heintzemann, Boston 






CONTENTS 




Preface 


vii 


'The Greek Religion 


3 


Greek Philosophy 


19 


Greek Philosophy — Socrates 


M 


"Founders of Stoicism 


48 


Doctrines of Stoicism 


66 


Roman Stoicism 


85 


Roman Jurisprudence 


103 


Relation to Christianity 


in 


Some Roman Stoics : 




Epictetus 


I3 1 


Seneca 


*45 


Marcus Aurelius 


163 


Selections from Epictetus 


188 


Selections from Seneca 


110 



Selections from Marcus Aurelius 245 



PREFACE 

Stoicism was the noblest system of morals 
developed within the pale of Greek philoso- 
phy. For over two centuries it was the creed, 
if not the philosophy, of the Roman people, 
whose type of character from the first was 
moulded on the Stoic lines. 

The multitude of great and memorable 
truths taught by the Spanish courtier, the 
Phrygian slave, and the Roman emperor, 
inculcating as they did the loftiest morality, 
high standards of action, of absolute self-sac- 
rifice for the sake of virtue, and representing 
most powerfully the moral and religious con- 
victions of the age, no doubt prepared the 
way for Christianity, as well as tinctured the 
thought of modern ages. 

Stoicism contributed the noblest men, and 
the loftiest conceptions of virtue and morality 
that we meet with in history before the time 
of Paul. In fact, Stoicism is not only a system 

vii 



PREFACE 

of philosophy, but also of religion, and as such 
it was regarded by its first adherents. 

In order that the reader may better com- 
prehend the origin and progress of the Stoic 
doctrines, a brief account is given of the Greek 
religion and philosophy, both of which un- 
doubtedly had a considerable influence upon 
the rise of the Stoic philosophy. 

The selections from Epictetus, Seneca, and 
Marcus Aurelius have been made with great 
care, and they comprise some of the noblest 
thoughts of these disciples of Stoicism. 

C. H.S. D. 



Vlll 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 
AND SOME OF ITS DISCIPLES 



THE GREEK RELIGION 

Herbert Spencer has shown that man's 
imperishable love of life and his aspirations 
for a higher, a harmonious, and an assured in- 
dividual existence, constitute the primal foun- 
tain of all human motives, and is the great in- 
centive of all human endeavor and progress. 
Ethics or philosophy does not inspire men 
with an assured hope in an unending exist- 
ence, and no system can prevail that has not 
had its foundations already laid upon the 
primitive rocks of human nature. 

We find in the history of all religions that 
the underlying belief was an effort to relieve 
and raise humanity, and however lofty the 
ideal of the old teachers of religion, it is still 
nothing more than an ideal. Plato said, " To 
desire is to love that which as yet we do not 
possess, that which is not and of which we 
feel the lack." The intense yearning after the 

3 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

Divine, a cause, the principle which gave us 
being, we find showing itself all through the 
pagan world, and illumined here and there by 
a few immortal truths. From the beginning 
man has blindly and in ignorance groped his 
way slowly onward and upward after what has 
ever been beyond his power to define. 

Paul said of certain people, "that they 
should seek the Lord if haply they may feel 
after him and find him." The ethnic reli- 
gions are the effort of man to feel after God. 
They partially satisfied a great hunger of the 
human heart, and, no doubt, in a great degree, 
they directed the human conscience toward 
the right. We find in the sacred books of all 
nations, the Bible, Koran, Vedas, Zendavesta, 
the laws of Confucius, a vast amount of fin- 
ished truth, in the most childlike form, with- 
out any attempt at formal reasoning, poured 
forth from the mind by spontaneous inspira- 
tion. All Oriental religions are the natural 
products of the religious instinct in man 
working itself out in accordance with the 
principle of natural evolution. And in process 
of time religious progress as well as advance 

4 



THE GREEK RELIGION 

in philosophy, proves that their growths are 
an increment of both, and also a cleansing 
from mythology. A writer has said, that a re- 
ligion should not be judged by the amount 
of ancient mythic dross clinging to it, or the 
puerilities of superadded theological dogma- 
tism and priestly discipline, but from the 
amount of pure spiritual food it contains, 
also the practical help it gives towards right- 
eous happy living. We read in the Fravashis, 
" We worship the souls of the holy men and 
women, born at any time or in any place, 
whose consciences struggle, or will struggle, 
or have struggled for the good." 

Over five thousand years ago the sacred 
books of Egypt taught the unity and spiritu- 
ality of God, a recognition of the Divine in 
nature, the feeling that the Deity is in all life, 
in all form, in all change as well as in what is 
permanent and stable. The oldest of the reli- 
gious texts which have come down to us, dat- 
ing at least 3000 B.C., teaches the doctrine of 
the immortality of the soul, and it appears as 
a completed system with a long history of de- 
velopment behind it. We find a belief in a fu- 

5 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

ture judgment besides a morality of justice 
and mercy. The Egyptian religion through- 
out breathes a lofty morality, and a grand con- 
ception of law and responsibility. The scribe 
Pentaur wrote, " Thou alone existant, the cre- 
ator of being." " In thy rest, thou watched 
over men, and considered what is best for the 
beasts. ... As high as heaven, as wide stretch- 
ing as the earth, as deep as the sea, the gods 
fall down before thy majesty, extolling the 
spirit of him who has created all things. . . . 
Praise to thy spirit because thou hast made 
us ; we are thy creatures, thou hast placed us 
in the world." 

In the Prisse Papyrus, dating from the 
Xllth Dynasty (2400 B.C.), the Fourth Com- 
mandment is found in almost identical terms: 
" The son who hearkens to the word of his 
father, he shall grow old thereby." Other 
texts exhort to the study of wisdom, to re- 
gard and respect parents and superiors, to 
mercifulness, generosity, discretion, integrity, 
sobriety, chastity, and the like. We read in 
the Book of the Decide " I did that which was 
right ; I hated evil ; I gave bread to the hun- 

6 



THE GREEK RELIGION 

gry and water to the thirsty, clothing to the 
naked, succor to him who was in need. ,, " I 
harmed not a child. I injured not a widow ; 
there was neither beggar nor needy in my 
time ; none were anhungered, widows were 
cared for as though their husbands were still 
alive. ,, "I did that which was pleasing to my 
parents ; I was the joy of my brethren, the 
friend of my companions, honorably minded 
towards all my fellow citizens. I gave bread 
to the hungry and shelter to the traveler ; my 
door stood open to him who entered from 
without, and I refreshed him." Many of the 
Vedic hymns rise to the purest heights of 
moral consciousness, and faith in immortal- 
ity is often expressed. In ancient Brahman- 
ism, its hymns and prayers, its epics, its phil- 
osophy, were all intensely spiritual, and the 
same tendency to spiritual worship exists un- 
changed in the Hindu mind to-day. The 
Laws of Manu thus sum up the system of 
morals of the Brahmins : "Contentment, the 
act of returning good for evil, temperance, 
purity, repression of that which is sensual, the 
knowledge of the holy books, union with the 

7 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

supreme soul, and the avoidance of anger — 
these are the virtues which constitute our 
duty." 

Buddha, through his personal influence and 
his ability to speak to the heart, his unsullied 
purity, and the spirit of his life and work, 
inculcated a lofty system of morals which 
exerted a mighty influence upon millions of 
people, who were thus saved from the depths 
of barbarism, brutality, and selfishness. 1 

We read in the Lalita Vis tar a: <c From east 
to west the air thrills with the accents of Bud- 
dha, a sweet, melodious sound which goes 
straight to the heart." Said Buddha : 

" The real treasure is that laid up by man or 
woman 

Through charity and piety, temperance and self- 
control. 

The treasure thus hid is secure and passes not 
away, 

Though he leaves the fleeting riches of this world : 
thus man takes with him 

1 Says Max Miiller : " If I were asked under what sky 
the human mind has developed some of its choicest gifts, 
has most deeply pondered on the great problems of life, 
and has found solutions of some of them which well deserve 
attention even of those who have studied Plato and Kant, 
I should point to India." 

8 



THE GREEK RELIGION 

A treasure that no wrong of others, and no thief 

can steal. 
Let the wise man do good deeds — the treasure 

that follows of itself." 

The religion of Zoroaster had in it sublime 
anticipations of truth which made it an ele- 
vating and salutary influence over the great 
nation professing it. 

The doctrines of Egypt, India, and Persia, 
and the thoughts and aspirations of genera- 
tions of people who had been blindly seeking 
after a higher and better life, are doubtless 
discovered in the philosophy of Greece, but 
the spirit of Greek philosophy is essentially 
Greek, and Oriental doctrines were a subse- 
quent and late admixture and infusion. 1 

The general ideas of our Aryan or Indo- 
European forefathers are manifestly repro- 
duced in the fundamental features of Greek 
mythology and religion, but from the earliest 
history of Greece we find a religion that had 

1 Professor Lefevre has shown us the relationship be- 
tween the Hellenic and Hindu, Assyrian and Egyptian di- 
vinities. Vestiges of Phoenician, Thracian, and Syrian leg- 
ends can also be traced in Greek mythology. See Lefevre, 
La Grece Antique. Entretiens sur les Origines et les Croy- 
ances. 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

outgrown the naturalistic religion of the primi- 
tive Aryans, and had become monotheistic, 
with a divinity essentially human, but which 
became in time specialized and idealized. In 
the beginning, religion as well as philosophy 
had to pass through a mythological period. 
They were founded at a time when science 
and methods of inquiry did not as yet exist. 
But with rare insight the ancient prophets and 
philosophers taught many moral truths which, 
even in their imperfect form, proved an in- 
valuable source of solace and help in the tribu- 
lations of life. 

The main idea in the Greek religion was the 
sight of something divine in human nature. 
Each god represented some human quality 
carried to its perfection. To the Greeks every- 
thing beautiful was holy ; they worshipped 
the ideal in nature and human life ; every- 
thing pleasant to man was acceptable to the 
gods. The love of beauty was their religion, 
and it was an active religious faith that was 
the origin of Greek art. Their creed was a 
deification of the human faculties and the pas- 
sions and affections of mankind. The Greek 



IO 



THE GREEK RELIGION 

ideal was that of development, the artistic 
culture of all human emotions and energies, 
the bringing forth of that divineness that lay 
within the nature of man. Says Schiller: — 

" When o'er the form of naked Truth 

The Muse had spread her magic veil, 
Creation throbbed with life and youth, 

And feeling warmed the insensible. 
Then nature, formed for love's embrace, 

The earth in brighter glory trod; 
All was enchanted ground, each trace 

The footsteps of a god." 

The Greeks taught first in poetry and then 
in plastic art, that man should not bow down 
to anything beneath him, and that nature can 
only become fit to be worshipped by being 
idealized and made human. Greek art origi- 
nated with the images of the gods, and was 
the offspring of human emotion and aspira- 
tion, and the statues the Greeks wrought and 
the temples they erected, to commemorate 
the acts and attributes of some special deity, 
became living objects of beauty. In fact, both 
sculpture and architecture emanated from the 
same grand ideal conception, namely, to em- 
body in imperishable forms the attributes and 

1 1 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

acts of their hero-gods. The elemental char- 
acter of the Greek religion was no doubt 
greatly influenced by the sculptors, and kept 
always before the eyes of a worshipping peo- 
ple the divine attributes of purity, wisdom, 
serene benignity, and noble elevation of soul. 
cc What the philosophers did to lead upward 
the minds of the thoughtful, the sculptors 
accomplished for the mass of the Greek peo- 
ple. " Art, however, with the Greeks was a 
sentiment. It was the embodiment of physi- 
cal beauty in its most perfect forms, and artis- 
tically rendered human emotion, but it did 
not touch the heart. It had its root rather in 
human philosophy than in divine spirituality. 
But the Greeks opened to themselves and 
posterity an entirely new world wherein the 
human mind had free development. 

No doubt the amalgamation of two races 
of dissimilar mental development, quickened 
mental impulse, enlivened sensuous emotion, 
and created new images in the world of im- 
agination. In healthful exuberance and power, 
body and mind co-operated with each other, 
and the ideas of beauty were the generic 

12 



THE GREEK RELIGION 

principles which emanated from the perfect 
rhythm of their physical, moral, and mental 
organization. "The ancient Greek saw in the 
floating cloud a moving wing, in the summer 
wind a goddess's whisper, and in the noise 
and bubble of the waves, the voice of the 
old man of the sea; to his simple idea of the 
things in the world around him he added a 
new sense, fresh and beautiful, and so created 
a poetry of vivid and intense loveliness, a re- 
ligion of winds and waves, a morality of sun- 
light and spring glories." 

The exuberant imagination of the Greeks 
inhabited a land well suited to foster and nur- 
ture the fancy and imagination. It displays a 
variety of surface and coast-line such as is pos- 
sessed by scarcely any other country in the 
world. The climate and the aspects of nature 
were favorable to develop an active imagina- 
tion, and to suggest images of beauty. The 
ever changing color, in which the deep, in- 
tense blue constitutes the ground tone, and 
at sunset the sides of the mountains bathed 
in a deep, soft, yet quite vivid violet hue; 
this, with the absolutely intoxicating fragrance 

13 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

exhaled in spring by the spicy pines and 
blooming shrubs, could not help but appeal 
to the exuberant imagination of the Greeks. 

Every city, every mountain, every fertile 
plain, every shady grove, or crystal stream, 
was celebrated in song as the haunt of one or 
more of the numberless divinities. Air, water, 
earth, wood, cornfield, and the homes of men, 
were full of divine life. " They placed Jupiter 
in Olympus, Apollo in the sun, Neptune in 
the sea, Bacchus in the vintage, and Ceres 
among the yellow corn. Their imagination 
filled the fountains with Naiades, the woods 
with Dryades, and made the sea teem with 
the children of Nereus." The Greeks had 
no doubt of the actual presence of the gods 
in these places consecrated to them. Says 
Lehrs (Gott, Gotter und Ddmonen), "When 
your Greek contemplated nature and the 
feebleness and dependence of man, there 
arose before him not one God . . . but there 
was a spontaneous outbreak of the fullness of 
life divine. He saw a world of gods." 

As all the deities were the creations of a po- 
etic imagination, Herodotus tells us that Ho- 

14 



THE GREEK RELIGION 

mer and Hesiod were the framers of the Greek 
theogony, as it was their work which greatly 
assisted in moulding into form the popular 
ideas regarding the various gods which peo- 
pled heaven and earth, and the sea, and the 
regions under the earth. Says Gladstone, 
"The Iliad of Homer was a main instrument 
in establishing the dominant features of the 
Hellenic religion." 

The Greek religion was filled with forms of 
beauty and nobleness. " It was a heaven so near 
at hand, that their own heroes had climbed 
into it, and became demi-gods. It was a heaven 
peopled with such a variety of noble forms, that 
they could choose among them the protector 
whom they liked best, and possibly themselves 
be selected as favored by some guardian deity. 
The fortunate hunter, of a moonlight night, 
might even behold the graceful figure of 
Diana flashing through the woods in pursuit 
of game, and the happy inhabitant of Cyprus 
come suddenly on the fair form of Venus 
resting in a laurel-grove. The Dryads could 
be seen glancing among the trees, the Oreads 
heard shouting on the mountains, and the 

15 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

Naiads found asleep by the side of their 
streams." 

There is much that is noble and beautiful 
in Greek legendary faith, and it led in time to 
a spiritual conception of one sole Supreme 
Being, the Ruler of human destiny. To the 
Greek, Zeus was the Supreme Being, Ruler 
and Preserver of the universe, and Source of 
Wisdom and Justice. We read of him in the 
Iliad and Odyssey as the "Cloud-veiled One," 
" Cloud Compeller " " Thunderer," " Supreme 
Lord," " Father of Gods and Men." The 
poorest and most abandoned might rely on his 
care, and the homeless beggar could claim his 
powerful protection (Odyssey, vi, 208). For 
several centuries, no rational speculation seems 
to have been entered upon, nor any inquiry 
made, with respect to the origin of the world, 
or the first principle of things, beyond what 
Homer and Hesiod had intimated in their 
poems. 

But the Greeks finally, as Erdmann says, 
"when the unquestioning acceptance of life 
had yielded to reflection," came to believe in 
the rule of a Divine Providence, according to 

16 



THE GREEK RELIGION 

justice and mercy, and while they were de- 
voted to ritual and outward observances, and 
as every religion is deeper and purer than its 
ritual, so we must not judge the piety of the 
Greeks by their art, literature, or superstitions. 
The poets of the fifth and sixth century b.c. 
reflect the conviction which all the higher 
minds of Greece were coming to hold, that 
the world is under the rule of one Divine 
Being, and to the educated Greeks the old 
religion had in its essence passed away. The 
religious sentiment of Greece rose gradually, 
by following its own moral institutions, to a 
very elevated conception of deity, and we can 
trace all through Greek poetry down to the 
age of Pericles, the development of the Greek 
conscience side by side with advancing civili- 
zation and aesthetic culture. The religion of 
Greece taught that Nature worked in obedi- 
ence to the Divine laws, and there was recog- 
nized an indwelling of the Divine presence in 
all natural phenomena and every visible creat- 
ed thing, therefore the philosophic mind of 
Greece was thus prepared to inquire into and 
speculate upon the laws themselves. It was 

17 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

the Greeks who first attempted to compre- 
hend the nature of the human mind, and the 
first to attempt to solve the riddle of the uni- 
verse. The Greeks were also the first to afford 
us the picture of personal inner development. 



18 



II 

GREEK PHILOSOPHY 

The Stoic system, as such, owes its rise to a 
union of ethical and speculative elements, in 
which both were more definitely determined 
by one another. In order that we may more 
thoroughly understand the rise of Stoicism, 
and the grounds on which it is based, it will 
be necessary to very briefly consider some of 
the previous systems of Greek philosophy. 

Although Greek philosophy was to a great 
extent an original conception, yet it was no 
doubt somewhat influenced by the Greek re- 
ligion, and also by the metaphysics of the 
East. We find that the early Greek and In- 
dian philosophers have many points in com- 
mon. According to Greek tradition, Thales, 
Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Democritus, and 
others visited Oriental countries in order to 
study philosophy. At the advent of the Bud- 
dha the Jain sect had already attained a prom- 

l 9 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

inent position in the religious world of India. 
The Jains were advocates of the development 
theory ; hence their ideal was physical, men- 
tal, moral, and spiritual perfection. They 
taught that the universe is a system by itself, 
governed by laws inherent in its very consti- 
tution. The universe is not for man alone, 
but is a theatre of evolution for all living 
beings. The Jains taught that the cosmos has 
no beginning and no end. The search for a 
cause or origin is the outcome of the inner 
conviction of the human mind that a state of 
things must be the effect of sufficient cause. 
This doctrine had its influence on the Sankh- 
ya philosophy, and later on the doctrines 
taught by some of the Greek philosophers. 

The doctrines of the Eleatics, that God and 
the universe are one, that everything existing 
in multiplicity has no reality, and that think- 
ing and being are identical ; the making a 
complete abstraction of everything material 
— all are to be found in the philosophy of 
the Upanishads and the Vedanta system, 
which is its outcome. Again, the doctrine of 
Empedocles, that nothing of all that perish- 

20 



GREEK PHILOSOPHY 

eth ever is created, nothing ever really findeth 
an end in death, has its exact parallel in the 
characteristic doctrine of the Sankhya system 
about the eternity and indestructibility of 
matter. But above all, Pythagoras was greatly 
indebted to Indian philosophy and science. 
In fact, almost all the doctrines ascribed to 
him, religious, philosophical, mathematical, 
were known in India in the sixth century, 
B.C. The transmigration theory, the assump- 
tion of five elements, the Pythagorean theo- 
rem in geometry, and the mystical specula- 
tions of the Pythagorean school, all have their 
close parallels in ancient India. And as all 
subsequent philosophers borrowed from Pyth- 
agoreanism, we can see the influence of Indian 
doctrines in many subsequent schools of phil- 
osophy, more particularly, perhaps, with the 
Neo-Platonists and its disciples, Plotinus and 
Porphyry. 

About five or six centuries before Christ, 
philosophical speculation was devoted to 
knowing the order of the world, independent 
in its application to the common utilities, and 
to an investigation of the ultimate basis and 

21 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

essential nature of the external world. The 
Greeks faced the problems of life and science 
and art in a direct manner and formulated 
them with great simplicity, and the succes- 
sive phases of their philosophic speculation 
constitutes a most curious and interesting 
chapter in history. The schools grappled with 
the most difficult problems, and the examples 
of intellectual acuteness have been rarely 
equalled, never excelled. 

The attempt of the earlier philosophers 
to generalize the universe, and to resolve 
all nature into some great unity, or common 
substance or principle, or, more accurately, to 
discover which element of nature is the funda- 
mental element, gave rise to a great many 
theories. But the basis upon which they 
rested was in its nature unsubstantial, for it 
included errors due to imperfect and erro- 
neous observations. Aristotle says, that "of 
those who first philosophized, the majority as- 
sumed only material principles or elements. " 
"The Greeks," says Professor Butcher, 1 "be- 
fore any other people of antiquity, possessed 

1 Some Aspects of Greek Genius. 

22 



GREEK PHILOSOPHY 

the love of knowledge for its own sake. To 
see things as they really are, to discern their 
meanings and adjust their relations, was with 
them an instinct and a passion. Their methods 
in science and philosophy might be very 
faulty, and their conclusions often absurd, 
but they had that fearlessness of intellect 
which is the first condition of seeing truly. 
Poets and philosophers alike looked with un- 
flinching eye on all that met them, on man 
and the world, on life and death. They inter- 
rogated Nature, and sought to wrest her se- 
crets from her, without misgiving and with- 
out afterthought. They took no count of the 
consequences. c Let us follow the argument 
whithersoever it leads/ may be taken not only 
as the motto of the Platonic philosophy, but 
as expressing one side of the Greek genius." 
But with all the crudities and puerilities of 
thought, there were intellectual giants in those 
days. The Ionic philosophers boldly met and 
solved the most abstruse questions of ontol- 
ogy. The Pythagoreans penetrated into the 
mysteries of mathematical science. The Ele- 
atics formulated much valuable truth as to the 

23 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

nature and attributes of Deity. The Atomists 
conducted their investigations in the most 
approved methods of induction, and reached 
results which the disciples of Lord Bacon 
have done little more than verify. The Greek 
mind saw the world as a cosmos, produced, 
therefore, and ruled by a reasoning principle, 
or logos. From Heraclitus to the Stoics, from 
the Stoics to Philo Judaeus, the term passed ; 
changed, modified, expanded in turns, but 
always there. 

Thales considered water the primordial and 
fundamental principle. Anaximander adopted 
as the foundation of the universe something 
called by him the infinite or undeterminate, 
out of which the various substances, air, fire, 
water, etc., were generated, and to which they 
were again resolved. Anaximenes chose air as 
the element which best represented or sym- 
bolized the underlying principle of nature. 

Philosophy was first brought into connec- 
tion with practical life by Pythagoras (582— 
504). Regarding the world as a perfect har- 
mony, dependent on number, he aimed at 
inducing mankind likewise to lead a harmoni- 

24 



GREEK PHILOSOPHY 

ous life. Pythagoras gave number as the es- 
sence and foundation of all existing things ; 
the different numbers being representative of 
different natural properties and powers ; thus 
Jive stood for color, six for life, etc. " All 
things," said the Pythagoreans, " as known, 
have number ; and this number has two na- 
tures, the odd and the even ; the known thing 
is the odd-even or union of the two." This 
principle of union was God, ever living, ever 
one, eternal, immovable, self-identical. The 
whole tendency of Pythagoreanism was in a 
practical respect ascetic, and directed to a 
strict culture of the character. 

Xenophanes attacked the popular polythe- 
ism, and he insisted that God must be one, 
eternal, incorporeal, without beginning or 
ending. At the same time he recognized a 
world of phenomena, or, as he expressed it, 
" a world of guesswork or opinion." 

Parmenides drew a deep division between 
the world of reason and the world of sensa- 
tion, between probative argument and the 
guesswork of sense-impressions. 

Heraclitus maintained a theory of incessant 

25 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

change, the negation of all substance and sta- 
bility, a power of perpetual destruction and 
renovation. As in the living body, wherein 
while there is life there is no stability or fixed- 
ness ; stability and fixedness are the attributes 
of the unreal image of life, not of life itself. 
Heraclitus considered fire as an image, or sym- 
bol, of the underlying reality of existence. 
Fire was a symbol, suggested by the special 
characteristics of fire in nature, its subtlety, 
its mobility, its power of penetrating all things 
and devouring all things, its powers for benefi- 
cence in the warmth of living bodies, and the 
life-giving power of the sun. From fire all 
things originate, and return to it again by a 
never-resting process of development. All 
things, therefore, are in a perpetual flux. 

Anaxagoras treated the world as made up 
of elements, but indefinite in number. By the 
attraction of each for its own kind, the primi- 
tive chaos was separated, but excepting intelli- 
gence, no element ever was perfectly pure, the 
characteristic of each substance being deter- 
mined by the predominance of the proper 
element. "All things were as one ; then com- 

26 



GREEK PHILOSOPHY 

eth intelligence, and by division brought all 
things into order." Intelligence he conceived 
as something apart, giving doubtless the first 
impulse to the movement of things, but leav- 
ing them for the rest to their own inherent 
tendencies. 

Empedocles took his stand upon the four 
elements, out of which all things were consti- 
tuted by the action of the opposing principles 
of love, as enmity or discord — a poetical 
representation of attraction and repulsion. 
His speculation about things, like those of 
Parmenides before him and of Lucretius after 
him, are set down in verse. Empedocles was 
the first philosopher who supplanted guesses 
about the world by inquiry into the world 
itself. 

The celebrated atomic theory originated 
with Leucippus and with his pupil Democri- 
tus. The doctrine of the latter was antithet- 
ical to that of Empedocles, who worked out 
on abstract lines a theory of one indivisible, 
eternal, immovable Being. Democritus, on 
the contrary, declared for two co-equal ele- 
ments, Being and Nonentity. The latter, he 

27 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

maintained, was as real as the former. All the 
visible structure of the universe had its origin 
in the movements of the atoms that consti- 
tuted it, and conditioned its infinite changes. 

With Anaxagoras, who combined together 
the principles of all his predecessors, we may 
say that the realistic period of the old Grecian 
philosophy closed. It was the ending of an old 
and the beginning point of a new course of 
development. The object of the philosophers 
had been to demonstrate the absolute unity 
of the external world, and to establish that all 
variety was, in truth, only the apparent diver- 
sity under which it is given to the perishable 
senses to contemplate it. Their conceptions 
of human knowledge, arising out of their 
theories as to the constitution of things, had 
been no less various, but their thoughts still 
exercise a potent, though unnoticed, sway in 
almost every department of philosophy, lit- 
erature, oratory, and science, in all civilized 
countries of the old world and the new. 

It now remained for the Sophists, whose 
teachings struck its roots into the whole mor- 
al, political, and religious character of the 

28 



GREEK PHILOSOPHY 

Athenian life of that time. They opened up 
discussions on virtue, on justice, on the laws, 
and on happiness. Plato remarks in his Re- 
public that the doctrines of the Sophists only 
expressed the very principles which guided 
the course of the great mass of men of that 
time in their civil and social relations. Their 
philosophy came in contact with the univer- 
sal consciousness of the educated class of that 
period. 

The theoretical principle of the Sophistic 
philosophy was that the individual Ego can 
arbitrarily determine what is true, right and 
good. The Sophists taught, that all thought 
rests solely on the apprehensions of the senses 
and on subjective impression, and that there- 
fore we have no other standard of action than 
utility for the individual. Philosophy which 
had at first been a protest against the existing 
state of things, now became the conviction of 
duty ; its dominant idea being submission to 
that law which every man can discover by 
a persevering examination of himself. The 
Greek religion at first announced no moral 
law, and neither by precept nor example un- 

29 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

dertook to guide men's consciences. It was 
not until Grecian wisdom had outgrown the 
myths of paganism, that philosophy appeared 
in a pure state, disengaged from religious su- 
perstition. All the Grecian schools, however, 
agreed in one thing, namely, to inculcate out- 
ward respect for established forms of religion 
as an instrument of government. So the Stoic, 
Epicurean, Peripatetic, and others consented 
to practise on public occasions the rites which 
they not less openly derided in their speaking 
and writing. The philosophers, as a matter of 
expediency and prudence, did not attempt to 
disturb the faith of the multitude, for they 
considered that a traditional mythology was 
necessary to maintain order in the state. They 
feared that a rabble without superstition would 
be ungovernable. The faith of the multitude 
in the old gods remained unshaken, for it had 
long attributed the deliverance from the perils 
of various wars to their mighty and merciful 
influence. Philosophy, however, gradually 
undermined the old religion and substituted 
for it more noble ideas, a pure monotheism, 
and profound ethics, and the current of moral 

3° 



GREEK PHILOSOPHY 

philosophy reached the depths of many souls 
and left there a fruitful deposit, a grand prin- 
ciple of honor and saving power. Many in- 
quiring minds turned to philosophy and to 
teachers who professed to have explored the 
mysteries of life, and to have found a safe 
rule for human action. 

In Thales, Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Par- 
menides, Empedocles, and others, we find 
an apostolic succession of great men, great 
thinkers, and great poets — men of noble life 
and lofty thoughts, true prophets and re- 
vealers. The progress of philosophy from 
Thales to Plato was the noblest triumph 
which the human mind, under pagan influ- 
ence, ever achieved. It originated and car- 
ried out the boldest speculations respecting 
the nature of the soul and its future existence, 
and elevated a code of morals which has in- 
fluenced mankind for two thousand years. 

Thales, the first Grecian philosopher (b. 
494 b.c.) said, " Of all things, the oldest is 
God; the most beautiful is the world; the 
simplest is thought; the wisest is time." 
" Death does not differ at all from life." He 

31 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

also taught that a divine power was in all 
things. Pythagoras (b. 584 b.c.) taught that 
God was one ; yet not outside of the world, 
but in it, wholly in every part, overseeing the 
beginnings of all things and their combina- 
tions. God is the soul of the world, and the 
world itself is God in process. Through the 
interchange and intergrowth of all the contra- 
rieties of lower existence, God realizes him- 
self; the universe in its evolution is the self- 
picturing of God. 

Xenophanes (b. 600 B.C.), the head of the 
Eleatics, declared God to be the one and all, 
external, almighty, and perfect being, being 
all sight, feeling, and perception, without be- 
ginning or ending. He is both finite and in- 
finite. 

Empedocles (460 b.c.) declared God to be 
the Absolute Being, sufficient for himself, and 
that we can recognize God by the divine ele- 
ment in ourselves. 

Diogenes of Apollonia (500 b.c.) taught 
that there was a primum mobile, or first source 
of being in action, the Soul of the Universe. 
He regarded the universe as issuing from an 

3 2 



GREEK PHILOSOPHY 

intelligent principle, by which it was at once 
vivified and ordered, a rational as well as sen- 
sitive soul. 

Then came the sceptical movement which 
ended when Socrates first taught the doctrine 
of Divine Providence, declaring that we can 
only know God in his works. Socrates insti- 
tuted a severe logical analysis of the meaning 
of ethical terms, asking, "What is piety?" 
"What is impiety ?" "What is noble ?" 
"What is base?" "What is just?" "What is 
temperance?" "What is madness?" "What 
is a state?" "What constitutes the character 
of a citizen?" "What is rule over man?" 
" What makes one able to rule ? " 



33 



Ill 

GREEK PHILOSOPHY— SOCRATES 

The speculations of philosophers for a cen- 
tury or more had arrived at the hopeless con- 
clusion that there was no absolute standard 
of right and wrong, and that all that men can 
know is dependent upon sensation and per- 
ception through the senses. But it was left 
for Socrates to teach the real objective exist- 
ence of truth and morality. Like the Sophists, 
he rejected entirely the physical speculations 
in which his predecessors had indulged, and 
made the subjective thoughts and opinions of 
men his starting-point. He endeavored to ex- 
tract from the common intelligence of man- 
kind an objective rule of practical life. Socrates 
aimed to withdraw the mind from the con- 
templation of nature, and to turn its regard 
on its own phenomena. He believed every 
man has within himself the germs of knowl- 
edge, and the only way by which men can 

34 



GREEK PHILOSOPHY — SOCRATES 

conquer truth is to struggle valorously with 
himself for its possession. Hegel says that 
" Socrates is celebrated as a teacher of moral- 
ity, but we should rather call him the inventor 
of morality. The Greeks had a morality of cus- 
tom ; but Socrates undertook to teach them 
what moral virtues and duties were. The 
moral man is not merely he who wills and 
does that which is right — not the merely 
innocent man — but he who has the conscious- 
ness of what he is doing. Socrates, in assign- 
ing to insight, to conviction, the determination 
of men's actions, posited the individual as 
capable of a final moral decision, in contra- 
position to country and customary morality, 
and thus manifested a revolutionary aspect 
towards the Athenian state. It was for giving 
utterance to that principle that Socrates was 
condemned to death." 

Socrates was not the founder of any school, 
although all the subsequent celebrated schools 
of Greece were developments of his principles. 
He was the first philosopher who endeavored 
to provide religion with a stable foundation, 
working at the same problem which occupied 

35 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

the prophets of Israel, and building up the 
rule of one God. 

■ 

Socrates taught that the Supreme Being is 
the immaterial infinite governor of all, that 
the world bears the stamp of his intelligence, 
and attests it by irrefragable evidence, and 
that he is the author and vindicator of all 
moral laws. But while Socrates taught the 
unity of God, the soul's immortality, and the 
moral responsibility of man, yet his philoso- 
phy is of purely an ethical character, and he 
was the first to teach ethics systematically, 
and from the immutable principles of moral 
obligation. Cicero said that Socrates brought 
philosophy down from heaven to earth, that 
is to say, wrested it from a purely objective 
naturism, and established it on the domain of 
psychological facts, thus placing it on its true 
basis. 

Socrates could not conceive how a man 
should know the good and yet not do it ; it 
was to him a logical contradiction that the 
man who sought his own well-being should 
at the same time knowingly despise it. There- 
fore, with him the good action followed as 

36 



GREEK PHILOSOPHY— SOCRATES 

necessarily from the knowledge of the good 
as the logical conclusion from its premise. 
The practice of virtue he inculcated as indis- 
pensable to happiness and true religion, and 
his philosophy is exclusively an inquiry into 
the nature of virtue. Self-knowledge appeared 
to him the only object worthy of man, as the 
starting-point of all philosophy. Knowledge 
of every other kind, he pronounced so insig- 
nificant and worthless, that he was wont to 
boast of his ignorance, and to declare that he 
excelled other men in wisdom only in this, 
that he was conscious of his own ignorance. 

Socrates taught that the human soul is 
allied to the divine essence, not by a partici- 
pation of essence, but by a similarity of na- 
ture ; that if the soul of man is a portion of 
the Deity, virtue, and therefore happiness, 
must be sought by endeavoring to mould 
ourselves after the divine image. The Phaedo 
of Socrates stands among the masterpieces of 
literature. But the soul which Socrates in the 
Phaedo called immortal is not the soul or 
spirit of the Christian doctrine. It is more the 
vital principle, the seat of desire, affection, 

37 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

and reason, than the spiritual principle in 
man. 

According to the philosophy of Socrates, 
man excels all other animals in the faculty of 
reason, and that the existence of good men 
will be continued after death, in a state in 
which they will receive the reward of their 
virtue. The first principles of virtuous con- 
duct are, according to Socrates, the laws of 
God, because no man can depart from them 
with impunity. He taught that true felicity is 
not to be derived from external possessions, 
but from wisdom, which consists in the knowl- 
edge and practice of virtue ; that the cultivation 
of virtuous manners is necessarily attended 
with pleasure, as well as profit ; that the hon- 
est man alone is happy ; and that it is absurd 
to attempt to separate things which are in 
nature so closely united as virtue and inter- 
est. 

Socrates was the first to maintain that reason 
is above nature, and that the natural is merely 
subservient to intellectual ends. He believed 
in the existence of one supreme Divinity, the 
Creator and Disposer of the universe, the 

38 



GREEK PHILOSOPHY— SOCRATES 

Maker and Father of mankind, the Ruler 
and Governor among the nations, invisible, 
all-powerful, omniscient, and omnipotent, per- 
fectly wise and just and good. His one only 
and constant prayer was, that God would 
guide him, and give him, not riches, pleasure, 
honor, power, which were as likely to prove a 
bane as a blessing, but what was best for him ; 
since God only knew what was for his true 
and highest good. 

In his dialogues with Aristodemus and with 
Enthydemus, he says : " Such is the nature 
of the Divinity : that he sees all things, hears 
all things, is everywhere present, and con- 
stantly superintends all events. He who dis- 
poses and directs the universe, who is the 
source of all that is fair and good, who, amid 
the successive changes, preserves the course 
of nature unimpaired, and to whose laws all 
beings are subject, this supreme Deity, though 
himself invisible, is manifestly seen in his 
magnificent operations. Learn, then, from the 
things which are produced, to infer the exist- 
ence of an invisible power, and to reverence 
the Divinity." 

39 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

Socrates did not deny the inferior deities, 
but regarded them only as we regard angels 
and archangels, saints and prophets, as finite 
beings, above man, but infinitely below the 
Supreme Being. 

Socrates taught men to think aright, to give 
right views of duty, and to expand into life 
and vigor man's moral, as well as his intel- 
lectual nature. He constantly enforced the 
virtues of temperance, sobriety and justice. 
He taught the love of knowledge, the love 
of goodness, the worth of friendship, courage, 
and wisdom. To him goodness is something 
sacred in itself, and he had no respect for 
theories that had not for their object and end 
the attainment of some practical good. It was 
the beauty and glory of Socrates' character, 
that his doctrine of providence and prayer 
and a future state was the controlling princi- 
ple of his life. He was an acute inquirer into 
the existing philosophies of the day, a pro- 
found and original thinker, but at the same 
time endowed with a heart of childlike piety, 
and a lofty moral character, which wrought 
his faith, his doctrine, and his life into com- 

40 



GREEK PHILOSOPHY— SOCRATES 

plete accord, and he was the first who caused 
the truths of philosophy to exercise a practical 
influence upon the masses of mankind. 

The fathers of the Christian church vie 
with heathen moralists, in deservedly extoll- 
ing the wisdom and self-denying virtue of 
Socrates. Says a writer, "He was raised up 
to be a prophet to the whole civilized world, 
and by his lofty wisdom he was a Greek John 
the Baptist, preparing the way for a higher 
teacher than himself. ,, Says Rosseau, 1 " Soc- 
rates himself would have aspired to no higher 
honor than that of being a forerunner of 
Christ among the Greeks. That honor justly 
belongs to him ; and his propaedeutic influence 
can easily be traced, like that of Plato, and 
largely through him and his followers, in the 
history and philosophy of the Greeks and 
Romans before and after Christ, while the 
power of his teaching and his life is still felt 
in all the literature, the philosophy, and the 
religion of all Christian nations." 

Says Grote, 2 " There can be no doubt that 

1 Smile, bk. IV. 

2 History of Greece. 

41 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

the individual influence of Socrates perma- 
nently enlarged the horizon, improved the 
method, and multiplied the ascendant minds 
of the Grecian speculative world, to a manner 
never since paralleled. Subsequent philoso- 
phers may have had a more elaborate doctrine, 
and a larger number of disciples who imbibed 
their ideas ; but none of them applied the same 
stimulating method with the same efficacy ; 
none of them struck out of other minds that 
fire which sets light to original thought ; none ' 
of them either produced in others the pains 
of intellectual pregnancy, or extracted from 
others the fresh and unborrowed offspring of 
a really parturient mind." 

After the death of Socrates a number of 
schools of philosophy came into being, which 
incorporated some of the fundamental doc- 
trines of Socrates or contained some systems 
which existed anterior to the age of Socrates, 
but which were modified by the influence of 
the Socratic philosophy, and which often 
changed, exaggerated, or perverted the tenets 
of their common master. Of such were the 
Cynic school of Antisthenes and Diogenes, 

42 



GREEK PHILOSOPHY— SOCRATES 

the Cyrenaic school of Aristippus, the Pyrr- 
honic school of Pyrrho, the Megaric or Eris- 
tic school of Euclid, and Diodorus Chronos, 
the Academic school of Plato, the Epicurean 
school of Epicurus, and the Peripatetic school 
of Aristotle. 

The fundamental thought of the followers 
of Socrates was that man should have one uni- 
versal and essentially true aim, but the nature 
of this aim varied with the teaching of the 
various disciples. The majority, however, of 
philosophical schools deviated from the spirit 
of Socrates, who had taught men to have a 
high regard for their duties and to act after 
mature consideration. The schools of philos- 
ophy learned either the idealism of Plato or 
the analytic method of Aristotle, while the 
later system of ethics partakes largely of the 
Stoic self-sacrifice, and the Epicurean doc- 
trine of the highest pleasure as the chiefest 
good. But when Zeno had elaborated his 
ethical system, something was offered to the 
people that their religion was no longer able 
to bestow. We shall see how much Zeno and 
the later teachers of Stoicism were indebted 

43 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

to Socrates for many of their best and noblest 
thoughts. 

It is not our purpose to follow the course 
of Greek philosophy from Socrates to Zeno. 
We have only briefly referred to the philoso- 
phers before Socrates, and to Socrates, in order 
that the reader may see to what extent Zeno 
may have been influenced by his predeces- 
sors. As we have seen, the influence of Soc- 
rates was undoubtedly very great. He gave 
the impulse to Plato, the great master, the 
Shakespeare of Greek philosophy, as he has 
been called. The moral philosophy of Plato 
was adopted from the teachings of Socrates 
without notable modification or alteration. 
Plato, in his turn, acted upon Aristotle, and 
the systems of philosophy developed by Soc- 
rates, Plato and Aristotle, have persistently 
dominated human belief to the present day. 
Outside the sacred literature of the world, 
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were the main 
factors of civilization. They fulfilled a truly 
sublime mission in their day and nation, for 
in the fourth century, B.C., these philosophers 
and their disciples made an end to the more 

44 



GREEK PHILOSOPHY— SOCRATES 

ancient materialism, and built up those sys- 
tems of philosophy, including the natural 
sciences, which have exercised so vast an in- 
fluence upon the progress of man, and still do 
in very many instances. They were the great 
prophets of the human conscience in the pa- 
gan world. Says Pressense, " The philosophy 
of a people is the highest and truest expression 
of its genius. Its thinkers evolve from their 
inner consciousness, the fundamental prin- 
ciples of the nation's life, apart from all that 
is merely accessory/' 

We shall see that the philosophy of Greece 
did inestimable service in preparing the way 
for Christianity, by purifying the idea of the 
Deity, and we shall find in their religious 
ideas and their psychology many points of 
union with Christianity. Zeller has shown * 
that the decadence of the national Greek life 
had a marked influence upon philosophic 
thought. At the time that the philosophy of 
Greece reached its highest point in Plato and 
Aristotle, Greece was in all other respects in 
a hopeless state of decline. The old morality 

Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics. 

45 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

and propriety of conduct had disappeared, 
and the philosophy of the day offered no 
substitute for the loss of the old belief in the 
gods. The age required moral bracing and 
strengthening. As this was not to be found in 
the national religion, philosophy was looked to 
to supply the deficiency, and Epicureanism 
and Stoicism, by the essentially practical char- 
acter of their teaching, and by their concentra- 
tion of thought on ethical problems and on the 
moral life of the individual, supplied the needs 
of the educated people by inculcating peace of 
mind by avoiding all those disturbances which 
sometimes arise from external influence, at 
other times from internal emotions. As a 
writer has said, the Stoics had replaced the 
incomprehensible God of Plato, and the soli- 
tary God of Aristotle, by a living God who 
penetrates and fills the universe with his own 
life — the God which underlies the Vedas as 
it underlies Hellenism, and the Semitic peo- 
ples. Although under conditions which they 
did not understand, Stoic and even Epicu- 
rean were preparing the way for the Chris- 
tian religion, and Greek civilization was an 

46 



GREEK PHILOSOPHY — SOCRATES 

essential condition of the progress of the 
Gospel. 

Professor Cocker ■ sums up the work of 
preparation done by Greek philosophy, as 
seen : — 

" i. In the release of the popular mind 
from polytheistic notions, and the purifying 
and spiritualizing of the theistic idea. 

" 2. In the development of the theistic 
argument in a logical form. 

"3. In the awakening and enthronement 
of conscience as a law of duty, and in the ele- 
vation and purification of the moral idea. 

"4. In the fact that, by an experiment con- 
ducted on the largest scale, it demonstrated 
the insufficiency of reason to elaborate a per- 
fect ideal of moral excellence, and develop the 
moral forces necessary to secure its realiza- 
tion. 

"5. It awakened and deepened the con- 
sciousness of guilt and the desire for redemp- 
tion. 

1 Christianity and Greek Philosophy. 



47 



IV 
THE FOUNDERS OF STOICISM 

The aim of Stoicism was to popularize 
the doctrines and the teachings of philoso- 
phers, which had been for some time the 
property of the learned class, also to provide 
the individual in a period of great moral de- 
pravity, with a fixed moral basis for practical 
life. This school was founded at Athens about 
310 b.c, by Zeno of Citium, and brought 
to fuller systematic form by his successors as 
heads of the school, Cleanthes of Assos, and 
especially Chrysippus of Soli, who died about 
206 B.C. 

Zeno was born at Citium, in the island of 
Cyprus, a Greek city having a large Phoeni- 
cian admixture. 1 Proving a studious boy, his 
father, who was a merchant, early devoted him 

1 It is noticeable that not only Zeno, but a large pro- 
portion of the successive leaders of the Stoic school, came 
from this and other places having Semitic elements in them. 

48 



THE FOUNDERS OF STOICISM 

to the study of philosophy. While on a visit 
to Athens, the elder Zeno purchased several 
of the writings of the most eminent philoso- 
phers, and these the young Zeno read with 
great avidity. So interested did he become 
in his philosophical studies, he determined to 
visit Athens where he could study the philo- 
sophical systems at their fountain head, which 
he did in his thirtieth year. Happening ac- 
cidentally to meet in a bookstore, Crates, the 
Cynic philosopher, he formed his acquaint- 
ance and, attending some of his lectures, he 
was so well pleased that he became one of his 
disciples. But while he admired the general 
principles and spirit of the Cynic school, he 
could not reconcile himself to their peculiar 
manners, and it was not long before he be- 
came dissatisfied with the coarse, ostentatious 
disregard for established usages, and the in- 
difference to speculative inquiry which char- 
acterized the Cynic sect. 

The school of Cynics was founded by 
Antisthenes, an Athenian by birth, about 
380 b.c. He was a pupil of Socrates, and, 
like him, he taught that a speculative philos- 

49 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

ophy was unprofitable, and should be sup- 
planted by the practical ethical training whose 
end is a moral and tranquil life. In this re- 
spect the Cynic school was like the Stoic, 
but differed in defining virtue to be extreme 
simplicity in living. In fact, the sole end of 
the Cynic philosophy seemed to be to subdue 
the passions, and produce simplicity of man- 
ners. But the rigorous discipline finally de- 
generated into the most absurd severity. The 
followers of Antisthenes wore the most filthy 
clothing, ate raw meat, and treated all who ap- 
proached them with great rudeness. Dioge- 
nes, of Sinope, became one of the most famous 
of the Cynics, and his striking figure and bold 
epigrams attracted great attention. 

The doctrine of Antisthenes was mainly 
confined to morals ; but even in this portion 
of philosophy it is exceedingly meager and 
deficient, scarcely furnishing anything beyond 
a general defence of the olden simplicity and 
moral energy, against the luxurious indul- 
gence and effeminacy of later times. Indeed, 
all speculation seemed to him quite idle or 
fantastic which did not bear directly upon 

50 



THE FOUNDERS OF STOICISM 

moral questions. Like Socrates he regarded 
virtue as necessary, indeed, alone sufficient 
for happiness, and could be a branch of 
knowledge that could be taught, and that 
once acquired could not be lost, its essence 
consisting in freedom from wants by the 
avoidance of evil, i.e., of pleasure and desire. 
Its acquisition needs no dialectic argumenta- 
tion, only Socratic strength. 

It was while he was with the Cynics that 
Zeno composed his Republic, a work which 
afterwards caused some trouble to the school. 
Zeno's inquisitive turn of mind led him to 
follow the teachings of other philosophers, 
notably that of Stilpo, a philosopher, who was 
a native of Megara, and taught philosophy 
in his native town. Such was Stilpo's invent- 
ive power and dialectic art, that he inspired 
almost all Greece with a devotion to the ethi- 
cal Megarian philosophy, dwelling especially 
upon the conception of virtue and its consid- 
erations. On moral topics Stilpo taught that 
the highest felicity consists in a mind free 
from the dominion of passion, a doctrine af- 
terwards incorporated into the Stoic belief. 

5i 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

Plato, in his dialogues, brings his philosophic 
conceptions into striking relation with the 
theories of the Megarian as well as the Cynic 
schools of thought. 

Zeno afterwards attended the lectures of 
Xenocrates and Diodorus Chronos, a native 
of Caria, and disciple of the Megaric school. 
By the latter Zeno was instructed in dialec- 
tics. He also became acquainted with the 
doctrines of Socrates and with Platonism. 
At last Zeno became a disciple of Polemon, 
a disciple of Xenocrates, whom he succeeded 
as director of the Academy. He strictly ad- 
hered in his teaching to the doctrines of 
Plato. Polemon was aware that Zeno's inten- 
tion in thus passing from one school to an- 
other was to collect materials for a new system 
of his own. Said Polemon, " I am no stranger 
to your Phoenician arts, Zeno ; I perceive 
that your design is to creep slyly into my 
garden and steal away my fruit." 

At last, after twenty years of preparation, 
having made himself master of the tenets of 
the prevailing philosophies, Zeno determined 
to become the founder of a new sect, which 

5 2 



THE FOUNDERS OF STOICISM 

should have for its object the liberating of 
himself and his followers from the degeneracy 
of the times, by means of a philosophy which, 
by purity and strength of moral will, would 
procure independence from all external things, 
and procure inward peace. The place he made 
choice of for his school was called the Poecile, 
or "Painted Porch," a public portico, so called 
from the pictures of Polygnotus and other 
eminent masters with which it was adorned. 
This portico, being the most famous in 
Athens, was called by way of distinction, Stoa, 
" the Porch." It was from this circumstance 
that the followers of Zeno were called Stoics, 
/'. <?., " men of the Porch." Zeno used to walk 
up and down in the beautiful colonnade, and 
there he delivered his discourses, wishing, as 
Diogenes Laertius observed, to make that 
spot tranquil ; for in the time of the Thirty 
Tyrants, nearly fourteen hundred of the citi- 
zens had died by the executioner's hand. 

Zeno began his teaching as a Cynic, to 
which he gradually added the tenets of other 
systems, noticeably those of Heraclitus, Aris- 
totle, Diogenes of Apollonia, and the Pytha- 

53 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

goreans. In their theory of knowledge, the 
Cynics made use of "reason," which was also 
one of their leading ethical conceptions. In 
this particular Zeno followed them. But he 
enlarged upon the belief of the Cynics, and 
made reason, or the logos, which had been an 
ethical or psychological principle of the Cyn- 
ics, an extension throughout the natural world, 
in which Heraclitean influence is unmistaka- 
ble, but he came to formulate his distinctive 
theory of the universe far in advance of the 
teaching of the Cynics. As to the moral doc- 
trine of the Cynics, there can be no doubt that 
he transferred it with but very little change 
into his own school. In fact it differed more 
in words than in reality. He retained the 
spirit of their moral teaching, but from his 
studies of other philosophies, he formed a 
new system of speculative philosophy. Ju- 
venal remarked that the distinction between 
the Cynics and the Stoics lay only in the coat 
they wore. 

The principal difference, however, between 
the Cynics and the Stoics was, that the former 
disdained the cultivation of nature, the latter 

54 



THE FOUNDERS OF STOICISM 

affected to rise above it. On the subject of 
physics, Zeno received his doctrine from 
Pythagoras and Heraclitus through the Pla- 
tonic school. Zeno combated Plato's doctrine 
that virtue consists in contemplation, and of 
Epicurus, that it consisted in pleasure. He 
sought to oppose scepticism, which was cast- 
ing its funeral veil of doubt and uncertainty 
over everything pertaining to the soul, God, 
and the future life. According to Zeno, to 
practise virtue was the highest duty of man, 
but knowledge was needed in order to prac- 
tise virtue. How, then, shall we obtain sure 
and certain knowledge ? The only knowledge 
which is sure, certain, immediate, and real, is 
the knowledge we have through the senses. 
The philosophy of Zeno did not absolutely 
deny to man the right to speculative endeavor, 
but inculcated, above everything else, a virtu- 
ous activity. Man must live to be virtuous, 
to do brave deeds, to be a man in the true 
Latin sense of the word vir-tus — manliness, 
mankind, i.e., strength, vigor, bravery, cour- 
age, aptness, capacity, worth, excellence, vir- 
tue, etc. 

55 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

Zeno was persuaded that if we only knew 
what is good we should be certain to practise it. 
With him sense furnishes the data of knowl- 
edge, and reason combines them; the soul 
being mortified by external things, and modi- 
fying them in return, he believed that the 
mind is at first, as it were, a blank tablet, on 
which sensation writes marks, and that the dis- 
tinctness of sensuous impressions is the cri- 
terion of their truth. Zeno, in his teaching, 
avoided interfering with the national religion, 
all of whose divinities were to him manifesta- 
tions of the One Being; and in virtue of this 
principle he was able to respect popular be- 
liefs. He taught a devout recognition of an 
all-powerful and perfectly good God, who di- 
rectly controls the universe. Regarding every- 
thing in the world as of divine origin, he de- 
nied the existence of evil, which would imply 
that the Deity was defective in either goodness 
or power. To show how God and the universe 
were distinct and yet one, was the problem of 
Zeno and his disciples. They taught that God 
was the soul of the great animal world. That 
he is the universal reason which rules over 

56 



THE FOUNDERS OF STOICISM 

all, and permeates all. That he is that gracious 
Providence which cares for the individual as 
well as for all. He is infinitely wise. His na- 
ture is the basis of law, forbidding evil and 
commanding good. 

While the teaching of Zeno was mainly 
ethical, it differed little from the moral doc- 
trines of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Epi- 
curus ; but it was accompanied by theological 
ideas which gave it a peculiar character. The 
Athenians had so much respect for Zeno that 
they honored him with a golden crown, and 
a brazen statue. King Antigonus held Zeno 
in great respect, and he attended his lectures 
whenever he came to Athens. Apollonius 
quotes the following letter of Antigonus to 
Zeno : — 

" I think that in good fortune and glory I 
have the advantage of you ; but in reason and 
education I am inferior to you, and also in 
that perfect happiness which you have at- 
tained to. On which account I have thought 
it good to address you, and invite you to 
come to me, being convinced that you will 
not refuse what is asked of you. Endeavor, 

57 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

therefore, by all means to come to me, con- 
sidering this fact, that you will not be the 
instructor of me alone, but of all the Mace- 
donians, and who leads him in the path of 
virtue, evidently marshals all his subjects on 
the road to happiness. For as the ruler is, so 
it is natural that his subjects for the most part 
shall be also." 

Zeno is described by Diogenes Laertius, as 
a person of great powers of endurance ; and 
of very simple habits, living on food which 
required no fire to dress it, and wearing a thin 
cloak, so that it was said of him : — 

" The cold of winter, and the ceaseless rain, 
Come powerless against him ; weak is the dart 
Of the fierce summer sun, or fell disease, 
To bend that iron frame. He stands apart, 
In naught resembling the vast common crowd ; 
But, patient and unwearied, night and day, 
Clings to his studies and philosophy." 

Philemon speaks thus of Zeno, in his play 
entitled The Philosophers: — 

u This man adopts a new philosophy, 
He teaches to be hungry ; nevertheless, 
He gets disciples. Bread his only food, 
His best dessert dried figs ; water his drink." 

58 



THE FOUNDERS OF STOICISM 

The disciples of Zeno were very numerous. 
Among the most eminent were, Persaeus, of 
Citium ; Ariston, of Chios, the son of Mil- 
tiades ; Sphaerus, of the Bosphorus ; Phil- 
onides, of Theles ; Callippus, of Corinth ; 
Posidonius, of Alexandria ; Athenodorus, of 
Soli ; and Zeno, a Sidonian. But one of the 
most noted was Cleanthes, of Assos, the son 
of Phanias, and we owe to him the carrying 
out and elaboration of the Stoic philosophy. 
He succeeded Zeno, and while he was not his 
equal in point of knowledge, by his genius he 
raised himself from a humble rank in life to a 
position of great eminence. His natural facul- 
ties were slow, but resolution and perseverance 
enabled him to overcome every difficulty. He 
wrote much, but none of his writings remain 
except the following beautiful hymn to Zeus, 
pronounced by Sir Alexander Grant "the most 
devotional fragment of Grecian antiquity." 

Most glorious God, invoked by many names, 

O Zeus, eternally omnipotent, 

The Lord of nature, ruling all by law, 

Hail ! For all men may speak to thee unblamed ; 

1 The Ethics of Aristotle, p. 328. 

59 



/ 



/ 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

From thee we spring, with reasoned speech endowed 

Alone of tribes that live and creep on earth. 

Thee will I hymn, and ever sing the power. 

Thee all this cosmos, circling round the earth, 

Obeys, and willingly is ruled by thee. 

Thou holdest in unconquerable hands 

So grand a minister, the double-edged, 

The burning, ever living thunderbolt ; 

For 'neath its strokes, all things in nature awed, 

Shudder; and thou therewith directest wise 

The universal reason, which through all 

Roams, mingling with the lights both great and 

small . . . 
The great supreme, all-penetrating king. 
Nor without thee, O God, is any work 
Performed on earth or sea, or in the vault 
Ethereal and divine, save whatso'er 
The wicked do through folly of their own. 
But thou canst perfect make e'en monstrous things, 
And order the disordered ; things not dear 
Are dear to thee : for into one thou so 
Hast harmonized the whole, the good and ill, 
That one eternal reason dwells in all; 
From which the wicked flee, ill-fated men, 
Who, longing ever to obtain the good, 
Nor see nor hear God's universal law, 
Obeying which they might achieve a life 
Worthy, enriched with mind ; but they in haste 
Forsaking good, seek each some different ill. 
For glory some arouse the eager strife ; 
And some, disordered, turn to gain ; and some 
Pursue, ungoverned, bodily delights. 

60 



THE FOUNDERS OF STOICISM 

But Zeus, all bounteous, wrapt in sable cloud, 
Thou ruler of the thunder, oh ! redeem 
Mankind from mournful ignorance. Do thou 
Dispel, O Father, from our souls this fault, 
And grant that we attain that wisdom high 
On which relying thou dost rule the world 
With Justice ; so that, honored thus by thee, 
Thee we in turn may honor, and may hymn 
Unceasingly thy works, as doth beseem 
A mortal, since nor men nor gods can know 
A grander honor than to greatly hymn 
The universal and eternal law. 



/ 



The dynamical theory of physics, as 
founded by Thales, developed by Anaxi- 
menes and Diogenes, and finally consummated 
by Heraclitus, had taught that the universe 
was an eternal living being, possessing in itself 
a principle of vitality, which, by spontane- 
ous development, produced all phenomena, 
whether physical or moral. The physical 
doctrines of Heraclitus were embodied by 
Zeno in his eclectic system of philosophy. 
According to Heraclitus, the end of wisdom 
is to discover the ground and principle of all 
things, which is an eternal and ever-living 
unity, and pervades and is in all phenomena. 
This principle is not distinct from the soul or 

61 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

vital energy, but which, as guiding and direct- 
ing the mundane development, is endowed 
with wisdom and intelligence. This supreme 
and perfect force of life is obviously without 
limit to its activity; consequently, nothing 
that it forms can remain fixed; all is con- 
stantly in a process of formation. In the 
eternal flux and flow of being constitutes its 
reality; even as in a river the water is ever 
changing, and the river exists as a river only 
in virtue of this continual change. This 
eternal movement Heraclitus pictured as an 
eternal strife of opposites, whose differences 
consummate themselves in finest harmony. 

While Zeno adopted this theory and en- 
deavored to identify the Cynic "reason" 
which is a law for man, with the "reason" 
which is the law of the universe, it remained 
for Cleanthes to take this idea out of the 
region of ethics, as it had been considered by 
Zeno, and to discover the motive cause. The 
vital principle pervading all phenomena is a 
purely physical fact, and accounts for the 
diverse destinies of all innumerable particular 
things ; it is the true cause of the movement 

62 



THE FOUNDERS OF STOICISM 

and process of the universe. Herein lies the 
key to the entire system of the Stoics. 

Doubtless the origin and success of the 
Stoic philosophy may be traced to the inade- 
quacy of the Platonic and the Aristotelian 
philosophy to discover the principle of con- 
nection between God and the sensible world. 
The doctrines, however, as taught by Zeno 
and his followers, contained little that was 
new, seeking rather to give a practical appre- 
ciation to the dogmas which they took ready- 
made from the previous systems. With them 
philosophy is the science of the principles on 
which the moral life ought to be founded. 

Cleanthes was succeeded by Chrysippus, a 
native of Soli or of Tarsus, in Cilicia, who 
died about 208 B.C. He was a man of much 
greater attainments than Zeno or Cleanthes, 
and he has been regarded as the chief prop of 
the Stoic school, in which respect it was said 
of him, that without Chrysippus there would 
have been no Stoic school at all. Says Diog- 
enes Laertius, "He was a man of great natural 
ability, and of great acuteness in every way, so 
that in many points he dissented from Zeno, 

63 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

and also from Cleanthes, to whom he often 
used to say that he only wanted to be in- 
structed in the dogmas of the school, and 
that he would discover the demonstrations 
for himself. But whenever he opposed him 
with any vehemence, he always repented, so 
that he used frequently to say : — 

In most respects I am a happy man, 
Excepting where Cleanthes is concerned ; 
For in that matter I am far from fortunate. 

And he had such a high reputation as a dia- 
lectician that most people thought that if there 
were such a science as dialectics among the 
gods, it would be in no respect different from 
that of Chrysippus. But though he was emi- 
nently able in matter, he was not perfect in 
style." 

Chrysippus wrote, according to Diogenes 
Laertius, over seven hundred books, and he 
often wrote several books on the same sub- 
ject, wishing to put down everything that oc- 
curred to him ; and constantly correcting his 
previous assertions, and using a great abun- 
dance of testimonies. Chrysippus assimilated, 

developed, and systematized the doctrines of 

64 



THE FOUNDERS OF STOICISM 

his predecessors, securing them in their stereo- 
typed and final form. He maintained with the 
Stoics in general, that the world was God, or 
a universal effusion of his spirit, and that the 
superior part of this spirit, which consisted in 
mind and reason, was the common nature of 
things, containing the whole and every part. 
Chrysippus labored after thoroughness, eru- 
dition, and scientific completeness. In dispu- 
tation he discoursed with a degree of prompti- 
tude and confidence, as well as a vehemence 
and arrogance which created him many adver- 
saries, particularly in the Academic and Epi- 
curean sects. He supported his teachings by an 
immense erudition, and culled liberally from 
the poets to illustrate and enforce his views. 
Of his writings nothing remains, except a few 
extracts which are preserved in the works of 
Cicero, Plutarch, Seneca, and Aulus Gellius. 
To Zeno, Cleanthes, and Chrysippus, we 
owe the building up of the character and 
spirit of Stoicism. At first, owing to the many 
rivals, the progress of Stoicism was very slow, 
but to the foundations then laid, hardly any- 
thing of importance was afterwards added. 

65 



DOCTRINES OF STOICISM 

As we have seen, the Stoic system, like the 
rest of the great Socratic schools, derived its 
main principles first at Athens, and was gradu- 
ally developed by Zeno, Cleanthes, and Chry- 
sippus, in the course of the third century 
before our era. The Stoics, like the Epicureans, 
avoided the labor of original invention. In 
logic and dialectics they were followers of 
Aristotle and the Cynics. In physics they 
were followers of Heraclitus, Socrates, and 
Aristotle. With the exception of the three- 
fold division of the elements, there is hardly 
a single point of the Heraclitian theory of 
nature which the Stoics did not appropriate. 
Their formal logic followed that of Aristotle. 
The Stoics, however, conceited the individual 
as no longer the political being conceived by 
Aristotle. They rose above the city to the 
notion of a more comprehensive fellowship 

66 



DOCTRINES OF STOICISM 

of mankind. Says Aristotle, " the chief good 
of man consists in the full realization and 
perfection of the life of man as man, in ac- 
cordance with the specific excellence belong- 
ing to that life, and if there be more specific 
excellence than one, then in accordance with 
that excellence which is the best and the most 
rounded and complete." This is in fact the 
teaching of Socrates and Plato. 

In ethics the Stoics followed Socrates, the 
Cynics, and the philosophers of the Old 
Academy, but they gradually diverged further 
and further from the Cynics, although the self- 
sufficiency of virtue, the distinction of things 
good, evil, and indifferent, the ideal pictures of 
the wise man, the whole withdrawal from the 
outer world within the precincts of the mind, 
and the strength of the moral will, are ideas 
taken from the Cynics. The Stoics them- 
selves, however, deduced their philosophical 
pedigree direct from Antisthenes, or the 
Cynics, and indirectly from Socrates. 

The Stoic doctrine showed itself to be an 
essentially practical one by laying the most 
stress on a proper mode of life, but this proper 

67 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

mode of life must proceed, as Socrates re- 
quired, from a proper conviction, and by the 
appreciation of a certain standard, or criterion. 
The Stoics have connected philosophy- 
most intimately with the duties of practical 
l life. Philosophy is with them the practice of 
wisdom, the exercise of virtue. Virtue is the 
perfect adjustment of all the desires and acts 
of the soul — in Christian phraseology, the 
submission of the will to the universal and 
persistent logos, the divine reason and provi- 
dence. Virtue is thus, necessarily, one and in- 
divisible. This ethical view is essentially the 
same with that of the most rigid Christian 
sects. Virtue consists in bringing man's actions 
into harmony with the laws of the universe, 
and with the general order of the world. This 
is only possible when man knows that order 
and those laws. With the Stoics, virtue and 
science are one, in so far, at least, that they 
divide virtue in reference to philosophy into 
physical, ethical, and logical. The Stoics not 
only define philosophy as the art of virtue, or 
the effort to attain it, but give as the reason 
of its division into logic, physics, and ethics, 

68 



DOCTRINES OF STOICISM 

the fact that there are logical, physical, and 
ethical virtues. They use the name of logic, 
because it treats of the logos, i.e., thought or 
the word, 1 together with the production of 
both. This they divided into rhetoric and dia- 
lectic, the arts of monologue and dialogue re- 
spectively, because it is possible to speak either 
for one's self, for others, and with others. The 
elaborate divisions and subdivisions into 
which they divided both rhetoric and dialec- 
tic, it is not necessary for us to speak of, as 
many of them now seem trivial, useless, and 
irrelevant to what is known as formal logic. 
They laid particular stress upon hypothetical 
and disjunctive syllogisms, which they did not 
introduce, but adopted from Aristotle. From 
Heraclitus to the Stoics, and from the Stoics 
to Philo Judaeus, the term logos passed, but 
constantly changed and modified. Heraclitus 
found the logos inseparable from the world. 
In man it is the soul. It was in no sense 
speech or word, but it was the relation or 

x The Greek term logos has a peculiar significance in 
Philo, St. John, and the early Greek Fathers, and is an 
important item in the history of Christology. 

6 9 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

reason of things objectively. This operative 
principle, with the Stoics, is the active prin- 
ciple which lives in and determines the world, 
and is even called God, though conceived as 
material. 

In logic, the Stoics found the criterion of 
knowledge in sensuous impressions, which 
furnish the materials fashioned by reason, and 
combated scepticism by affirming that every 
representation of an object implied the exist- 
ence of the object itself; it, they said, is 
nothing else than a representation which is 
produced by a present object in a manner 
like itself. The soul is conceived as a blank 
tablet upon which the object produces a con- 
ception either by actual impressions or by 
altering the psychical condition, from which 
there is subsequently generated by repeti- 
tions, first expectation and finally experience. 
Plutarch refers to this as follows : 

"When we perceive, for example, a white 
object, the recollection remains when the ob- 
ject is gone. And when many similar recol- 
lections have accumulated, we have what is 
called experience. Besides the ideas which we 

70 



DOCTRINES OF STOICISM 

get in this natural and quiet undesigned way, 
there are other ideas which we get through 
teaching and information. In the strict way- 
only these latter ought to be called ideas, the 
former rather should be called perceptions. 
Now the rational faculty, in virtue of which 
we are called reasoning beings, is developed 
out of, or over and beyond, the mass of per- 
ceptions, in the second seven years* period of 
life. In fact a thought may be defined as a 
kind of mental image, such as a rational ani- 
mal alone is capable of having/' 

The Stoics regarded sensations as the only 
source of all perceptions. Perceptions give 
rise to memory, repeated acts of memory to 
experience, and conclusions based on experi- 
ence suggest conceptions which go beyond 
the sphere of direct sensation. The forma- 
tion of conceptions by comparison, or upon 
the combination of perceptions, or upon 
analogy, sometimes takes place methodically 
and artificially, at other times naturally and 
spontaneously. Thus the Stoics conceived 
that they had answered the whole problem, 
in affirming that the true or conceivable repre- 

71 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

sentation reveals not only itself, but also its 
object. 

This theory of Zeno, undoubtedly adopted 
from Plato, was persistently attacked by the 
Epicureans and Academics, who made clear 
that reason is dependent upon, if not derived 
from, sense, and that the utterances of reason 
lack consistency. Chrysippus, as a concession 
to his opponents, substituted for the logos the 
new standards of sensation and general con- 
ception — anticipation, that is the generic type 
formed in the mind unconsciously and spon- 
taneously. It was under Chrysippus that the 
formal logic of the Stoics reached scientific 
completeness. Zeller says, however, " making 
every allowance for the extension of the field 
of logic, in scientific precision it lost more 
than it gained by the labors of Chrysippus." 
He considers that no very high estimate can 
be formed of the formal logic of the Stoics. 
" We see, indeed, that the greatest care was 
expended by the Stoics since the time of 
Chrysippus in tracing the forms of intellectual 
procedure into their minutest ramifications, 
and referring them to fixed types. At the same 

72 



DOCTRINES OF STOICISM 

time, we see that the real business of logic 
was lost sight of in the process, the business 
of portraying the operations of thought, and 
giving its laws, whilst the most useless trifling 
with forms was recklessly indulged in. The 
Stoics can have made no discoveries of im- 
portance even as to logical forms, or they 
would not have been passed over by writers 
ever on the alert to note the slightest devia- 
tion from the Aristotelian logic. Hence the 
whole contribution of the Stoics to the field 
of logic consists in their having clothed the 
logic of the Peripatetics with a new termin- 
ology, and having developed certain parts of 
it with painful minuteness, whilst they wholly 
neglected other parts, as was the fate of the 
part treating of inference." l 

Physics, or the 'Theory of Nature, In their 
physics, where they follow for the most part 
Heraclitus, the Stoics are distinguished from 
their predecessors, especially from Plato and 
Aristotle, by their thoroughly carried out 
proposition that nothing incorporeal exists, 
that everything essential is corporeal. With- 

1 Zeller, The Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics, p. 123. 

73 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

in the corporeal they recognized two prin- 
ciples, matter and force, i.e., the material, 
and the Deity permeating and influencing it. 
Ultimately, however, the two are identical. 
There is nothing in the world with any inde- 
pendent existence : all is bound together by 
an unalterable chain of causation. They, 
therefore, considered God and matter as one 
identical substance, which, on the side of its 
passive and changeable capacity they call mat- 
ter, and on the side of its active and change- 
less energy, God. There is in reality but one 
being existing. We may call him God, or we 
may call him the universe. The one is God 
active, the other is God passive. The one is 
the life, the other is the body which is ani- 
mated by the life. But since the Stoics con- 
sidered the world ensouled by God in the 
light of a living and rational being, they were 
obliged to treat the conception of God not 
only in a physical but also in its ethical as- 
pect. God is the source of all character and 
individuality, who is indestructible and eter- 
nal, the fashioner of all things, who in certain 
cycles of ages gathers up all things unto him- 

74 



DOCTRINES OF STOICISM 

self, and then out of himself brings them 
again to birth ; there is the matter of the uni- 
verse wherein God works, and there is also 
the union of the two. This is the totality of 
all existence ; out of it the whole universe 
proceeds, hereafter to be again resolved into 
it. The world is governed by reason and 
forethought, and this reason extends through 
every part. The universe, therefore, is a liv- 
ing thing, having a soul or reason in it. That 
every existence must have a body was the 
doctrine which moulded the whole of the 
theology of the Stoics. The very indefinite- 
ness in which they left the idea of the corpo- 
real, showed that they were far removed from 
the school of the Epicureans. Emotions, im- 
pulses, notions and judgments, in so far as 
they are due to material causes, were regarded 
as material objects, and for the same reason 
not only artistic skill but individual actions 
were said to be corporeal. 

Treated in its ethical aspect, God is not 
only in the world as the ruling and living 
energy, but is also the universal reason which 
rules the whole world and penetrates all mat- 

75 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

ter : he is the gracious Providence which 
cares for the individual and the whole ; he is 
wise, and is the ground of that natural law 
which commands the good and forbids the 
evil ; he punishes and rewards ; he possesses 
a perfect and blessed life. To the question, 
what is God? Stoicism rejoins, what is God 
not? Everything in the world seemed to 
them to be permeated by the divine life, 
and was regarded as but flowing out of the 
most perfect life through certain channels, 
until it returned in a necessary cycle back 
again to itself. Everywhere was one universal 
law pervading and ruling all things and all 
beings, and that law, if stern, was righteous, 
and enjoined virtue in man. Man can only 
lead a rational life by conforming to a general 
law, and he rises or falls in the scale of dig- 
nity and happiness as he succeeds or fails in 
doing thus with persistent purpose. Tiede- 
mann says of the Stoics, " Among all philos- 
ophers of antiquity, none defended the exist- 
ence of God with so warm a zeal or so many 
powerful arguments. " 

It is thus seen that the system of the Stoics 

76 



DOCTRINES OF STOICISM 

was strictly pantheistic, 1 as they admitted no 
essential difference between God and the 
world. In discussing the question as to what 
led the Stoics to this materialism, Zeller con- 
siders that the real causes will be found in the 
central idea of the whole system of the Stoics 
— the practical character of their philosophy. 
" Devoting themselves from the outset with 
all their energies to practical inquiries, the 
Stoics in their theory of nature occupied the 
ground of common views, which know of no 
real object excepting what is grossly sensible 
and corporeal. Their aim in speculation was 
to discover a firm basis for human actions. In 
action, however, men are brought into direct 

1 The speculations which have been called pantheistic 
are legitimate exercises of the human intellect. They are 
efforts to think and speak of God under the aspects in 
which God has appeared to different minds, or has been 
viewed under different relations. To call God Being, Non- 
being, Substance, Becoming, Nature, the Absolute, the 
infinite I, the Thought of the Universe, or the "not our- 
selves ' ' which works for righteousness, is to speak of God 
with the imperfections of human thought and language, 
and yet such names are as legitimate as Creator, vast De- 
signer, eternal Geometrician, or to those who receive it, 
even as Lord, Supreme Ruler, or Father of men. — Pan- 
theism and Christianity, John Hunt, D.D., p. 397. 

77 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

and experimental contact with objects. The 
objects thus presented to the senses we are 
brought face to face with in naked reality, nor 
is an opportunity afforded for doubting their 
real being. Their reality is proved practically, 
inasmuch as it affects us and offers itself for 
the exercise of our powers. In every such ex- 
ercise of power, both subject and object are 
always material. Even when an impression is 
conveyed to the soul of man, the direct instru- 
ment is something material — the voice or the 
gesture. In the region of experience there are 
no such things as non-material impressions. 
This was the ground occupied by the Stoics : 
a real thing is what either acts on us, or is 
acted upon by us. Such a thing is naturally 
material, and the Stoics, with their practical 
ideas, not being able to soar above that which 
is most obvious, declared that reality belongs 
only to the world of bodies. " x 

Ethics. The philosophy of the Stoics cul- 
minated in their ethics. In its speculation on 
the origin of things, still more in its ethical 
ideal, Stoicism is very near to some of the 

1 Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics, p. 134. 

78 



DOCTRINES OF STOICISM 

noblest phases of Christian theology and 
morals. Their ethics were a protest against 
moral indifference ; their followers were taught 
to live in harmony with nature, conformably \ 
with reason and the demands of universal 
good. They taught that it is wisdom alone 
that renders men happy, that the ills of life 
are but fancied evils, and that a wise man 
ought not to be moved with either joy or 
grief, but to show the utmost indifference to 
pleasure, pain, and all external good or evil. 

The chief end of life is " A life consistent 
with itself," or, as it was otherwise expressed, 
" A life consistent with nature." The first 
object of man is the preservation of his own 
existence and his consciousness of his own 
existence. This is its life according to nature ; 
this is virtue and the chief good, — for virtue 
and the chief good can be only life according 
to nature. Therefore live in harmony with thy 
rational nature so far as this has not been dis- 
torted nor refined by art, but is held in its 
natural simplicity. In the " life consistent with 
nature " is included also, life in and accord- 
ing to a social order, for nature is but a syn- 

79 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

onym for reason, and society is but a natural 
offspring of reason, the common nature of 
mankind. Herein we discover an internal 
source of the external harmony and regularity 
of a consistent life. The Stoics taught that 
nature counts for everything and external per- 
formances for very little. Once let the reason 
become right, and it imparts this character to 
all that it affects. First the soul is made strong, 
healthy, and beautiful ; when, therefore, it thus 
fulfils all the conditions of its being, it is ab- 
solutely perfect. Nothing can be conformable 
to nature for any individual thing, unless it 
be in harmony with the law of the universe, 
or with the universal reason of the world. 

From this moral principle we deduce the 
Stoic conception of virtue, which is a rational 
life, an agreement with the general course of the 
world. Only virtue is good, and happiness con- 
sists exclusively in virtue. The virtue of man 
is the perfection of his soul, Le., of the ruling 
part or rational soul; make the soul perfect 
and you make the life perfect. Then life will 
flow on smoothly and uniformly, like a gentle 
river. No longer will there be anything to 

80 



DOCTRINES OF STOICISM 

hope or fear; this harmonious accord between 
impulses and acts is itself man's well-being or 
welfare. Happiness consists in independence 
and peace of mind rather than in the enjoy- 
ment which moral conduct brings with it. To 
be free from disquietude, says Seneca, is the 
peculiar privilege of the wise ; the advantage 
which is gained by philosophy is, that of liv- 
ing without fear, and rising superior to the 
troubles of life. 

The Stoics held that pains are an evil, but, 
by a proper discipline, may be triumphed 
over. They disallowed the direct and osten- 
sible pursuit of pleasure as an end (the point 
of view of Epicurus), but allowed it to their 
followers partly by promising them the victory 
over pain, and partly by certain enjoyments 
of an elevated cast that grew out of their plan 
of life. Pain of every kind, whether from the 
casualties of existence, or from the severity of 
the Stoical virtues, was to be met with by a 
discipline of evidence, a hardening process 
which, if persisted in, would succeed in re- 
ducing the mind to a state of apathy or indif- 
ference. Even pleasure and pain, however, so 

81 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

far as concerns the absolute end or happiness 
of our being, are things indifferent; we can- 
not call them either good or evil. Yet they 
have a relation to the higher law, for the con- 
sciousness of them was so implanted in us at 
the first that our souls by natural impulse are 
drawn to pleasure, while they shrink from 
pain as from a deadly enemy. Things indif- 
ferent are things that are neither beneficial 
nor injurious, such as life, health, pleasure, 
beauty, strength, riches, good reputation, no- 
bility of birth, and their contraries, death, 
disease, labor, disgrace, weakness, poverty, 
and bad reputation, baseness of birth, and 
the like. 1 

Great stress was laid on the instability of 
pleasure, and the constant liability to acci- 
dents : whence we should always be anticipat- 
ing and adapting ourselves to the worst that 
could happen, so as never to be in a state 
where anything could ruffle the mind. It was 
pointed out how much might still be made of 
the worst circumstances — poverty, banish- 
ment, public odium, sickness, old age — and 

'Diogenes Laertius, Life of Zeno, p. 292. 

82 



DOCTRINES OF STOICISM 

every consideration was advanced that could 
"arm the obdurate breast with stubborn pa- 
tience, as with triple steel." 

The Wise Man. How must we act in every 
individual instance, in every moral relation, 
so as to act according to nature? To answer 
this question, the Stoics describe in general 
terms the action according to nature, and por- 
traying their ideal of the wise man. The wise 
man is he who, being perfect in his knowl- 
edge of the laws of the universe, above all 
passion, and completely governed by reason, 
is perfectly contained and self-satisfied, — a 
fit companion for the gods, yes, even for 
Zeus himself. He who possesses virtue pos- 
sesses it whole and entire; he who lacks it 
lacks it altogether. The wise man is drawn as 
perfect. All he does is right, all his opinions 
are true; he alone is free, rich, beautiful, 
skilled to govern, capable of giving or receiv- 
ing a benefit. Only the wise man is capable 
of feeling gratitude, love, and friendship. 
The wise man, therefore, is the perfect hu- 
man being; that is, perfectly adjusted to the 
rest of the universe, of which he forms a 

83 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

part. The one problem of life is to make the 
divine reason paramount and supreme in 
the sphere of one's own conduct. The wise 
man is directed to remember that Nature, in 
her operations, aims at the universal, and 
never spares individuals, but uses them as 
means for accomplishing her ends. It is for 
him, therefore, to submit to his destiny, en- 
deavoring continually to establish the supre- 
macy of reason, and cultivating, as the things 
necessary to virtue, knowledge, temperance, 
fortitude, justice. It was a great point with 
the Stoic to be conscious of "advance," or 
improvement. By self-examination, he kept 
himself constantly acquainted with his moral 
state, and it was both his duty and his satis- 
faction to be approaching to the ideal of the 
perfect man. In this picture of the wise man, 
the moral idealism of the Stoic system at- 
tained its zenith. 



84 



VI 
ROMAN STOICISM 

After the time of Chrysippus, details 
showing the practical application of the prin- 
ciples of the Stoics to the special relations of 
life, engrossed much of the attention of the 
Stoic philosophers. The Stoic doctrine was 
but rarely kept pure by its adherents; some 
diluted it, as did Epictetus and Seneca, so that 
it became a mere system of practical wisdom, 
and others exaggerated it by ascetic additions 
derived from the doctrines and rules of the Py- 
thagoreans and Cynics. Posidonius enumer- 
ates, as belonging to the province of moral phil- 
osophy, precept, exhortation, and advice. He 
held that reason cannot, as the earlier Stoics 
declared, be the cause of the passions, which, 
he thought, are by nature irrational, but that 
reason and the passions exist side by side in 
the soul as distinct faculties. Mere thought or 
will is not sufficient to arouse and control pas- 

«5 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

sion, except in highly cultivated natures. By 
this view Posidonius relaxed the evident strain 
in the system of the earlier Stoics upon the 
faith of ordinary consciousness in its own im- 
mediate presentiments. 

Although Stocism, as we have seen, arose 
on Hellenic soil, the school can hardly be con- 
sidered a product of Greek intellect, although 
the Romans never added a single principle to 
the philosophy which the Greeks elaborated. 
Stoicism did not, however, achieve its crown- 
ing triumph until it was brought to Rome, 
where for over two hundred years it was the 
creed, if not the philosophy of all the best of 
the Romans, and notably in ethics and juris- 
prudence. Stoicism has demonstrated the 
thought of after ages to a surprising degree. 
We find the most famous names in connection 
with the Stoic doctrine, belonging to the Ro- 
man world. The Roman type of character 
from the first was moulded on the Stoic lines. 
" The sternness, the strength, the indomitable 
endurance of the Roman : his indifference to 
intellectual speculation or intellectual activity 
of any sort, his moral dignity, his devotion to 

86 



ROMAN STOICISM 

duty, and the simplicity of his tastes and 
habits — which lent a strong tinge to the char- 
acter of even the degenerate Romans of the 
Empire — seem to mark out the Roman as 
the typical Stoic." l 

Panaetius was the chief founder of Ro- 
man Stoicism, which played so important a \y^ 
part in the history of the Roman Empire. 
He, however, departed more widely than any 
of the later Stoics from the dogmatic spirit 
and the tenets of the earlier. Panaetius was a 
man of means and culture, belonging to one of 
the oldest and most distinguished families of 
Rhodes. He studied under Diogenes, at 
Athens, and was a member of the historic 
embassy which proceeded from Athens to 
Rome in 155 B.C., to plead for toleration fof 
philosophers. The Stoic school was repre- 
sented by Diogenes, but its most active 
apostle was Panaetius. At Rome he was re- 
ceived into the circle of the younger Scipio 
and his friend Laertius, also of the historian 
Polybius and the poets Terence and Lucre- 
tius, and he was able to gain numerous adher- 

1 Brown, Stoics and Saints, p. 35. 

87 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

ents among the Roman nobles by his skill in 
softening the harshness and subtlety of the 
Stoic teaching, and in representing it in a re- 
fined and polished form. Cicero himself said 
that he chiefly followed Panaetius, not as a 
mere translator, but correctione quadam adhib- 
ita. His treatise upon Propriety of Conduct 
{De Officio) is based confessedly upon a trea- 
tise of Panaetius, while containing references 
to other teachers of the Stoicism, such as 
Antipater and Posidonius. 

Panaetius was not apparently a strict Stoic, 
but rather an eclectic philosopher, who tem- 
pered the austerity of his sect by adopting 
something of the more refined style and 
milder principles of Plato and other earlier 
Academicians. He modified the rigid tenets 
of his sect to make it the practical rule of life 
of statesmen, politicians and others, and dwelt 
upon the practical aspects of the creed, to the 
exclusion of all that might appear as too dia- 
lectic. Aulus Gellius says that Panaetius re- 
jected the principle of apathy adopted by the 
earlier Stoics, and returned to Zeno's original 
meaning, namely, that the wise man ought to 

88 



ROMAN STOICISM 

know how to master the impressions which 
he receives through the senses. He accommo- 
dated the Stoic theology to the popular re- 
ligion, and the Stoic ethical system to popular 
sentiment. 

At Rome Stoicism fell upon congenial soil ; 
the time was ripe for its acceptance ; it was, 
in fact, the one philosophy congenial to the 
Roman type. Says Rendall * : — 

" The emphasis it laid on morals, the firm- 
ness and austerity of its code, the harshness 
of its judgment on defaulters, the stern repu- 
diation of emotional considerations and im- 
pulses, even the narrowness and inflexibility 
of its moral logic, all commended it to Roman 
sympathies. The strength of Rome, the secret 
of her empire, lay in character ■, in an operative 
code of honor, domestic, civic, and (more at 
least than in other states) international. And 
the Stoic conception of virtue corresponded 
closely to the range of qualities denoted by 
Roman virtus — manliness. The traditional 
type of Roman patriot, the patrician stead- 
fastness of a Camillus or Dentatus, the devo- 

1 Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself, p. xciii. 

8 9 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

tion of a Deems, the dogged self-sacrifice of 
a Regulus, the sternness of a Brutus ordering 
his disobedient son to execution, the immova- 
ble and often ruthless allegiance to the con- 
stituted order of the commonwealth, were 
treasured historical exemplifications of un- 
formulated Stoicism. Its very narrowness and 
obstinacy of view was in its favor. Cato (of 
Utica) was typically Roman, and by his faults 
and limitations as much as his backbone of 
virtue became for a time the ideal of Roman 
Stoicism." 

At a time when there was no belief or doc- 
trine which offered support to men in their 
hour of trial, the doctrines taught by the Stoics 
were a source of consolation and a guide in 
the vicissitudes of life, to many of the great 
philosophers, statesmen, and even emperors 
of Rome. In Rome there was a universal 
corruption and depravity of manners. The 
religion of the time had not the least influ- 
ence towards exciting or nourishing solid and 
true virtue in the minds of men. It had but 
little if any influence on man's moral nature, 
and so long as there was a ceremonial obedi- 

90 



ROMAN STOICISM 

ence, there was no occasion to look for any 
spiritual influence beyond. The devout man 
was he who punctually performed his reli- 
gious obligations, who was pious according to 
law. It was only the philosophers who could 
comprehend the one God ; the imaginations 
of the uneducated were only engaged with the 
numerous powers and energies flowing forth 
from that one Highest Being. Plato said, that 
it was hard to find out the Father of all, and 
that it was impossible, when you had found 
him, to make him known to all. 

The vivid imagination of the Greek turned 
every deity of his religion into a stronger, 
wiser, and more beautiful man. All that the 
Roman knew of his gods was that the custom 
of his fathers required him to offer them 
prayers and sacrifices at particular times and 
seasons. Seneca in his Contra Superstitiones 
says : " We must pray to that great multi- 
tude of common gods, which in a long course 
of time a multifarious superstition has col- 
lected, with this feeling, that we are well aware 
that the reverence shown to them is a compli- 
ance rather with custom, than a thing due to 

91 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

the actual truth. All these things the philoso- 
pher will observe, as something commanded 
by the law, not as a thing pleasing to the 
gods." So Plutarch says: "He feigns prayer 
and adoration from fear of multitude ! and he 
utters words which are against his own con- 
viction; and while he is sacrificing, the priest 
who slays the victim is to him only a butcher." 1 
The more intelligent of the Romans looked 
/ upon the whole religious system as a just ob- 
ject of ridicule and contempt. Ovid said that 
"the existence of the gods is a matter of public 
policy, and we must believe it accordingly." 
In Rome there was a crop of superstitions 
native to the soil, divination of all kinds, scep- 
ticism and superstition, Chaldean astrology, 
the sensual rites of Cybele, and the fouler 
orgies of the Bacchanalia. The gods, above 
all things else, were instruments for helping 
man to the attainment of very substantial 
earthly objects. Lecky in his European Morals 
describes religion as follows: "The Roman 
religion was purely selfish. It was simply a 
method of obtaining prosperity, averting ca- 
1 Epicurum, ch. 22. 

92 



ROMAN STOICISM 

lamity, and reading the future. Ancient Rome 
produced many heroes, but no saints. Its self- 
sacrifice was patriotic, not religious. " What 
religion had come to in the minds of the more 
intelligent people, may be seen in this extract 
from the elder Pliny : — 

"All religion is the offspring of necessity, 
weakness, and fear. What God is, if in truth 
he be anything distinct from the world, it is 
beyond the compass of man's understanding 
to know. But it is a foolish delusion, which 
has sprung from human weakness and human 
pride, to imagine that such an infinite spirit 
would concern himself with the petty affairs of 
men. It is difficult to say, whether it might 
not be better for men to be wholly without 
religion, than to have one of this kind, which 
is a reproach to its object. The vanity of man, 
and his insatiable longing after existence, have 
led him also to dream of a life after death. A 
being full of contradictions, he is the most 
wretched of creatures; since the other creatures 
have no wants transcending the bounds of 
their nature. Man is full of desires and wants 
that reach to infinity, and can never be satis- 

93 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

fled. His nature is a lie, uniting the greatest 
poverty with the greatest pride. Among these 
so great evils, the best thing God has be- 
stowed on man is the power to take his own 
life." 

In Rome, devotion to the state, to the 
public good, was the atmosphere which men 
breathed. Mommsen remarks, that the Roman 
religion in all its details was a reflection of 
the Roman state. When the constitution and 
institutions of Rome changed, their religion 
changed with them. In time the state religion 
became undermined by philosophy, and it fell 
more and more into a decline. Much greater 
weight was paid to the punctilious perform- 
ance of religious obligations, than to any be- 
lief in the doctrines of religion. The priests 
had never been the social moralists of Rome; 
preaching and catechizing were unheard of; 
and the highest functionaries of religion might 
be and sometimes were men of scandalous life 
and notorious unbelief. Those who desire to 
study closely the moral infamy, have only to 
read the pages of Juvenal, the Tacitus of 
private life, or Suetonius, or Ovid. "It is not 

94 



ROMAN STOICISM 

more than thirty days," writes Martial, "and 
Thelesina is marrying her tenth husband." 
Seneca asks, "Will any woman blush at di- 
vorce when some who are illustrious, and of 
rank, count their years, not by their consul- 
ships, but by the number of their husbands?" 
The Epicurean school of philosophy ap- 
pealed strongly to the luxurious, the fashion- 
able, the worldly, and it exercised upon them a 
feeble restraining influence. The Epicureans 
were the patrons of the circus, and the theatre, 
and the banquet, and, indeed, of all the vanities 
and follies which disgraced the latter days of 
Rome. Epicurus placed the highest good in 
happiness, or a happy life. More closely he 
makes pleasure to be the principal constituent 
of happiness, and even calls it the highest 
good. One of the chief and highest pleas- 
ures of life Epicurus found in the possession 
of friends, who provided for each other not 
only help and protection, but a lifelong joy. 
By the word pleasure the Epicureans did 
not understand what was profligate and really 
sensual, but that state of body and mind 
which might be called tranquillity, freedom 

95 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

from disturbance and care. But self-love was 
the foundation of all action, and self-indul- 
gence was the ultimate good. It is a man's 
duty to endeavor to increase to the utmost his 
pleasures, and diminish to the utmost his 
pain. Epicurus denied the providence of 
God; he maintained that the world was gov- 
erned by chance; he denied the existence of 
moral goodness ; he affirmed that the soul 
was mortal, and that pleasure was the only 
good. Says Ferguson, 1 "the ordinary lan- 
guage of this sect, representing virtue as a 
mere prudent choice among the pleasures to 
which men are variously addicted, served 
to suppress the specific sentiments of con- 
science and elevation of mind, and to change 
the reproaches of criminality, profligacy, or 
vileness, by which even bad men are restrained 
from iniquity, into mere imputations of mis- 
take, or variations of taste." 

The influence of such a philosophy could 
have but one effect. The accumulation of 
power and wealth gave rise to universal de- 
pravity. Law ceased to be of any value. The 

1 History of the Roman Republic, ch. iv. 

9 6 



\ 



ROMAN STOICISM 

social fabric was a festering mass of rotten- 
ness. The higher classes on all sides exhibited 
a total extinction of moral principle; the 
lower were practical atheists. Says Tacitus: — 
"The holy ceremonies of religion were 
violated; adultery reigned without control; 
the adjacent islands filled with exiles ; rocks 
and desert places stained with clandestine 
murders, and Rome itself a theatre of hor- 
rors, where nobility of descent and splendor 
of fortune marked men out for destruction; 
where the vigor of mind that aimed at civil 
dignities, and the modesty that declined 
them, were offenses without distinction; 
where virtue was a crime that led to certain 
ruin; where the guilt of informers and the 
wages of their iniquity were alike detestable ; 
where the sacerdotal order, the consular dig- 
nity, the government of provinces, and even 
the cabinet of the prince, were seized by that 
execrable race as their lawful prey; where 
nothing was sacred, nothing safe from the 
hand of rapacity; where slaves were sub- 
orned, or by their own malevolence excited 
against their masters ; where freemen betrayed 

97 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

their patrons, and he who had lived without 
an enemy died by the treachery of a friend." 
In this very corrupt age, Stoicism was the 
philosophy congenial to the Roman type. 
The emphasis it laid upon morals, the firm- 
ness and austerity of its code, the stern repu- 
diation of emotional considerations or im- 
pulses, all commended itself to many noble 
and powerful minds, because it raised them 
above the corruption around them, and pro- 
claimed an ideal standard of morality, and 
the Stoics rallied to themselves all the noble 
souls who desired to rise above the fearful 
moral degradation of imperial Rome. The 
practical-minded Roman did not appreciate 
the deep speculations of many of the philos- 
ophers of the day, but he easily appreciated 
the Stoical principles of self-control, moral 
energy, and philosophic indifference to wealth 
and pleasure, and thus the leaven of Stoicism 
soon began to work among the social circles 
of the capital, and furnished strength and 
solace in the darkest hours of the troubled 
times. Stoicism enlarged the minds of its 
worthy votaries by purer conceptions of 

98 



ROMAN STOICISM 

Deity, and more literal views of humanity, 
teaching the unity of God with man, and 
man with one another. Says Montesquieu, 
"The sect of the Stoics spread and gained 
credit in the empire. It seemed as if human 
nature had made an effort to produce from 
itself this admirable sect, which was like 
plants growing in places which the sun had 
never seen. The Romans owed to it their best 
emperors." 

The Stoics maintained, almost in every 
particular, the reverse of the tenets of the 
Epicureans. They maintained the reality of 
Providence, and of a common interest of good- 
ness and justice ; for which Providence was 
exerted, and in which all rational creatures 
were concerned. Roman Stoicism placed a firm 
reliance in the moral energy of man, teaching 
the necessity of dispensing with, and the ab- 
solute worthlessness of external advantages ; 
referring all truth to the sensuous presentation, 
and recommending in all things, resignation 
to the divine dispensations. The more serious 
minded turned to some moralist for consola- 
tion, from a desire to find something better 
: L.ofC. 99 



I 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

/and more satisfying to the nature of man than 
could be found in the religions and mytholo- 
gies of Greece and Rome. Philosophy aspired 
not .only f o furnish struggling men with an 
authoritative standard, but to guide and help 
and strengthen them in their efforts to attain 
it. Says Plutarch : — 

" As exercise and medicine provide for the 
body's health and strength, so philosophy 
alone can cure the weakness or the sickness 
of the soul. By her help man learns to dis- 
tinguish the noble, from the base, the just from 
the unjust, the things worthy of our choice 
from those which we should shun ; she teaches 
him how he ought to act in all the relations 
of his social life, warning him to fear the gods, 
honor his parents/respect old age, obey the 
laws, submit to governors, be loving to his 
friends, show self-control with womankind, 
tenderness with children, moderation with his 
slaves — above all, not to triumph overmuch 
in prosperous days, or to be cast down in ad- 
versity, not to be overmastered by pleasure, 
\ or brutalized by passion." " 

1 De Educ. Puer., cp. 10. 

IOO 



ROMAN STOICISM 

The precepts of the Stoics, addressed to the 
ruling classes of the empire, stood forth in 
bold and startling hostility to the principles 
of existing authority, and it therefore at first 
met with the jealousy of the national author- 
ities, but it soon found a ready acceptance, 
and made rapid progress among the noblest 
families. The government heretofore had suf- 
fered the philosophers to teach as they pleased, 
and put no restraints on the spirit of inquiry 
which was sapping the positive beliefs of the 
day. But Stoicism gave rise to a new state 
philosophy and state religion, owing to the 
blending of the Stoic philosophy and the 
Roman religion. The speculative element 
was weakened, but the Stoic philosophy was 
raised into the semi-official state philosophy. 
This philosophy was undoubtedly better 
adapted for Rome than for the land where 
it first arose, and we meet with its traces in 
the most diversified spheres of action. Its 
theories of order and providence were emi- 
nently suited to a law-making and an organ- 
izing race. But in process of time the unbend- 
ing strictness of the old Stoicism began to a 

IOI 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

certain extent to be relaxed, and many of the 
rigorous definitions and maxims were toned 
down, and given more warmth and color to 
meet the demands of the Roman people. 
Stoicism attached itself to the religion of Rome 
as closely as science can at all accommodate 
itself to faith. Its adaptations to the purposes 
of civil polity, and its stern moral doctrine 
seemed to appeal to the Romans, and it con- 
tinued to flourish after the reign of the An- 
tonines, at which time the Stoics were flourish- 
ing at Athens, Alexandria and Tarsus, and in 
the time of Juvenal this sect_prevailed almost 
through the whole Roman-empire. 

Lorimer, speaking of Stoicism, says : — 
"With the single exception of Christianity, no 
form of belief ever took possession of so great 
a number of Europeans, and held it so long ; 
and it moulded human institutions and af- 
fected human destiny to a greater extent than 
all other philosophical systems, either of the 
ancient or the modern world." l 

1 Institutes of Law, p. 1 6 1 . 



I02 



VII ' 
ROMAN JURISPRUDENCE 

The Stoics taught that all things in nature 
came about by virtue of a natural and un- 
changeable connection of cause and effect, 
as the nature of the universe and the general 
law require. They were therefore strenuous 
in their teaching of the unconditional depend- 
ence of everything on a universal law and 
the course of the universe. The Grecian phi- 
losophers had long ago insisted on a law 
of nature, distinct from the conventional 
usages of different lands and ages, consisting 
of those laws which are common to all man- 
kind, and are supposed to be, as nearly as 
can be conjectured, independent of the acci- 
dents of time and place. The Stoics laid a 
special emphasis upon it, and made it the 
keynote of their moral system, as a guide to 
theory and a rule for practice in all the de- 
partments of man's action. They considered 

103 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

that law embodied rights, duties and rules of 
conduct evolved primarily by social life and 
intercourse. Hence the social instinct is a 
primary instinct in man, every manifestation 
of which contributes, either directly or indi- 
rectly, to the good of the whole. 

Marcus Aurelius wrote, that the passion of 
\y reason is love of society. Rational beings can 
only be treated on a social footing, and can 
only feel happy themselves when working for 
the community ; for all rational beings are re- 
lated to one another, all from one social unit, 
of which each individual is an integral part ; 
one body, of which every individual is an 
organic member. Cicero, though attached to 
the speculative doctrines of the New Academy, 
accepted with little change the ethical princi- 
ples of the Stoics. He says, that in no kind 
of discussion can it be more advantageously 
displayed how much has been bestowed upon 
man by nature, and how great a capacity for 
the noblest enterprises is implanted in the 
mind of man, for the sake of cultivating and 
perfecting which we were born and sent into 
the world, and what beautiful association, 

104 



ROMAN JURISPRUDENCE 

what natural fellowship, binds men together 
by reciprocal charities ; and when we have ex- 
plained these grand and universal principles 
of morals, then the true fountain of laws and 
rights can be discovered. 1 Cicero instructs, in 
one of the most beautiful and perfect ethical 
codes to be met with among ancient writers, 
the virtues of humanity, liberality, and justice 
toward other people, as being founded on the 
universal law of nature. 

Two fundamental points are insisted on by\\ 
the Stoics — the duty of justice and the duty \ \ 
of mercy, and the later Stoics, Seneca, Epic- 
tetus, Marcus Aurelius, and Musonius, em- 
phasized the most extended and unreserved 
charity, beneficence, gentleness, meekness, an 
unlimited benevolence, and a readiness to for- 
give in all cases in which forgiveness is possi- 
ble. 

A philosophy so vigorous and elevating 
had a great influence in moulding the opinions 
of all those persons who were brought under 
its influence, and its general spirit and method 
had a marked influence upon Roman juris- 

1 De Legibus, iv. 

105 






GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

prudence, which in its turn has exerted its in- 
fluence over all Eastern legislation, and still 
exists and is obeyed and consulted among 
most of the nations of modern times. The 
great jurists of Rome were familiar with the 
Stoic philosophy, as it was an important ele- 
ment in Roman education and culture, and 
received the almost uninterrupted support of 
the state during the period in which the in- 
fluence of the Roman jurisconsults was most 
marked. They saw in the law of nature an 
ideal of simplicity and universal truth for the 
legal student and reformer, and its general 
spirit and method affected the jurisprudence 
of Rome rather than any one doctrine that 
Stoicism taught. 

An innate genius for law distinguished the 
Roman people. The science of jurisprudence 
was to them the intellectual life that the older 
philosophy was to the Greek. They took 
great pride in building up their system of 
law upon a firm foundation ; they were the 
rational laws of life, to which a man must 
conform. They embodied in their very begin- 
V ning the cardinal doctrine of the Stoics, to 

106 



ROMAN JURISPRUDENCE 

live according to nature. It taught that there 
was a nature to which everything should con- 
form ; there was a nature of man, a nature of 
the society in which man lived, and a nature 
of the world as a whole. With the Stoics, the 
universe was considered as imbued with an 
all-pervading soul or power, which was looked 
upon not only as a dynamical force produ- 
cing motion, but as a rational principle pro- 
ducing order and perfection. This rational 
principle is a constituent element of all being. 
Therefore laws were required as the expression 
of a divine intelligence, and therefore exter- 
nally binding. 

In their writings and precepts, the Stoics 
paid great attention to the state and the do- 
mestic life. In marriage they required chastity 
and moderation. Love was to be a matter of 
reason, not of emotion, not a yielding to 
personal attractions, nor a seeking of sensual 
gratification. But it was to the state that the 
Stoics were the most strenuous. If man is in- 
tended to associate with his fellow men in a 
society regulated by justice and law, how can 
he withdraw from the most common institu- 

107 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

tion — the state P If laws further the well- 
being and security of the citizens, if they 
advance virtue and happiness, how can the 
wise man fail to regard them as beautiful 
and praiseworthy? 

The status of an individual was a strong 
point in Roman law. By the status (or stand- 
ing) of a person is meant the position that he 
holds with reference to the rights which are 
recognized and maintained by the law — in 
other words, his capacity for the exercise and 
enjoyment of legal rights. This capacity the 
Roman jurists, who had a highly developed 
doctrine of status, represented as depending 
on three conditions, libertas (or personal free- 
dom), civitas (or citizenship), and familia (or 
family relation). This citizenship affected 
every relation of life. In daily business, in the 
payment of taxes, in the making of contracts, 
in the details of common domestic life, in 
the disposing of property by will, or in the 
succeeding to inheritances, the Roman was 
continually reminded of his status, which 
differentiated him from all who were not en- 
franchised. 

108 



ROMAN JURISPRUDENCE 

The Roman jurists derived from Stoicism 
their ideas of the fundamental principles ac- 
cording to which human conduct should be 
shaped, and it was owing to their conception 
of the Stoic laws of nature that they were led to 
change the jus gentium and bring it into har- 
mony with the new theory of natural law. 
This became the jus naturale, or that law 
which springs from the universal nature of 
man and the conditions of human life and 
society, instead of being the product of local, 
temporary, accidental, and variable causes. 
Says Lee: — 

" By connecting the basis of jurisprudence 
with the eternal order of things through the 
conception of & jus naturale, a scientific foun- 
dation was given to the study of law. It was 
no longer an empirical study. It comprised 
more than a mere -knowledge of the law of 
any one age. It was the investigation of the 
fundamental principles underlying the law of 
all ages. The lawyer investigated the mean- 
ing of the various terms with which he dealt. 
He sought to express by careful definitions 
the exact nature of the concepts which en- 

109 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

tered into the law. He traced the principles in- 
volved in the processes of law, and expressed 
them in terse maxims. All this he did with 
the conviction that in this logical analysis he 
was attaining to a real knowledge, not merely 
a convenient summary of human conventions. 
But the scientific study of law by analysis of 
the legal conceptions and processes could not 
stop with the results of that analysis. If in 
every generalization the jurist came nearer to 
the real nature of things, he could also reverse 
the process ; he could apply the generaliza- 
tion to the practical cases which every day 
came to his notice. By the study of its foun- 
dations law was stripped of adventitious mat- 
ter and seen to be more comprehensive and 
more widely applicable." 1 

1 Lee, Historical Jurisprudence, p. 258. 



no 



VIII 
RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY 

Dr. Caird has said, that it was from Greece 
that the early fathers of the Christian church 
borrowed its forms and processes of thought, 
the general conceptions of nature and human 
life, of, in short, the general points of view or 
mental presuppositions which they brought to 
the interpretation of the facts of Christianity. 
A very large portion of what we call Christian 
theology is Greek philosophy in a new appli- 
cation. It was not until Judaism had come 
into wide and permanent contact with Hel- 
lenic culture, and had been fertilized by it in 
many ways, that Christianity could be devel- 
oped from it. 

If we examine closely the background upon 
which the structure of Christianity was erected, 
we shall find serious thought, vigorous life, 
and genuine piety. The rapid and powerful 
process of organization in Christianity itself 

i ii 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

would not have been possible, were it not for 
the independent efforts of paganism after a 
similar ideal. If Christianity triumphed in the 
end, it was by virtue of a very wide sympathy 
and a very extensive preparation in the mind 
of paganism. Says St. Augustine, " The very 
same thing which now is called Christianity 
existed among the ancients and was not absent 
from the beginning of mankind until Christ 
appeared in the flesh, whence the true religion, 
which already existed, began to be called Chris- 
tian." ' 

The second Greek religion which arose un- 
der the influence of philosophy and found its 
way wherever Greek culture spread, is con- 
sidered by Menzies 2 to have been a prepara- 
tion for the the coming of Christianity in the 
Greek world, without which its spread must 
have been much more doubtful. Says Men- 
zies : — 

"In the Graeco-Roman religion the ad- 

1 Ipse res quae nunc Christiana religio nuncupatur, erat 
apud antiquos nee defuit ab initio generis humani, quousque 
ipse Christus venerit in came, unde vera religio quae jam 
erat, coepit appelari Christiana. Retr., i, 13. 

2 History of Religion, p. 420. 

1 12 



RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY 

varices which appear in Christianity are already 
prefigured. Thought has been busy in build- 
ing up a great doctrine of God, such a God 
as human reason can arrive at, a Being infi- 
nitely wise and good, who is the first cause 
and the hidden ground of all things, the sun 
of all wisdom, beauty, and goodness, and in 
whom all men alike may trust. Greek thought 
also found much occupation in the attempt 
to reach a true account of man's moral nature 
and destiny. Both in theory and in practice 
many an attempt was made to build up the 
ideal life of man, and thus many minds were 
prepared for a religion which places the riches 
of the inner life above all others. The Greek 
philosopher's school was a semi-religious 
union, the central point of which was, as is the 
case with Christianity also, not outward sac- 
rifice but mental activity. It is not wonderful, 
therefore, if Christian institutions were assim- 
ilated to some extent to the Greek schools. 
It has recently been shown that the celebra- 
tion of the Eucharist came very near to bear a 
close resemblance to that of a Greek mystery, 
and that there is an unbroken line of connec- 

113 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

tion between the discourse of the Greek phi- 
losopher and the Christian sermon. In some of 
the Greek schools pastoral visitation was prac- 
tised, and the preacher kept up an oversight 
of the moral conduct of his adherents. While 
Christianity certainly had vigour enough to 
shape its own institutions, and may even be 
seen to be doing so in some of the books of 
the New Testament, the agreement between 
Greek and Christian practices amounts to 
something more than coincidences. " 

The thoughtful student may find many 
points of likeness in which the Christian the- 
ology and morals may have been indebted to 
the doctrines of the Stoics. The Stoics, as we 
have seen, placed value upon moral senti- 
ments, virtue, and wisdom. In common with 
Paul they could not paint in colors too glar- 
ing the universal depravity of mankind. They 
classed mankind as wise men and fools, and 
taught a " birth-day of eternity " which they 
called the day of death, in deliverance from 
the bondage of the flesh, the entrance on "the 
great eternal peace." We see here an affinity 
with Paul's teachings, who divided mankind 

114 



RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY 

into the regenerate and the degenerate ; they 
looked beyond this world to the glories of 
heaven, and he placed value upon faith alone. 
Stoicism lacked, however, what we may call 
Paul's method of salvation, of which the car- 
dinal points are conviction of sin, and salva- 
tion by faith. There are many points in Stoi- 
cism which harmonize with the doctrine of 
Christ. But Christ taught, however, that a 
true spiritual condition is attainable, not by 
unaided individual will, but by the help of 
the Divine Spirit, and that inexorable fate is 
not the ruling power of the universe. 

" It is difficult," says Lightfoot, " to esti- 
mate, and perhaps not very easy to over-rate 
the extent to which Stoic philosophy had 
leavened the moral vocabulary of the civil- 
ized world at the time of the Christian era." 
And he refers to conscience (conscientia), " the 
most important of moral terms, the crowning 
triumph of ethical nomenclature ... if not 
struck in the mint of the Stoics, at all events 
became current coin through their influence." 
To a great extent, therefore, the general dif- 
fusion of Stoic language would lead to its 

"5 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

adoption by the first teachers of Christianity. 
Vignoli x has shown that when Christianity 
began, pagan rationalism had arrived at the 
idea of a spiritual and directing power, origi- 
nally identical with the universe. It was 
neither the Olympus of the common people, 
nor the Semitic Jehovah, but rather the con- 
scious and inevitable order of nature. Says 
Vignoli : — 

" Christianity proclaimed the spiritual unity 
of God, the unity of the race, the brother- 
hood of all peoples, the redemption of the 
world, and consequently a providential influ- 
ence on mankind. Christianity taught that 
God himself was made man, and lived among 
men. Such teaching was offered to the people 
as a truth of consciousness rather than a dog- 
ma, although it was afterwards preserved in 
a theological form by the preaching of Paul, 
and the pagan mind was more affected by 
sentiment than by reason. The unity of God 
was associated in their aesthetic imagination 
with the earlier conception of the supreme 
Zeus, which now took a more Semitic form, 

1 Myths and Science, p. 1 84. 

116 



RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY 

and Olympus was gloriously transformed 
into a company of elect Christians and holy 
fathers of the new faith. A confused senti- 
ment as to the mystic union of peoples, who 
became brothers in Christ, had a powerful 
effect on the imagination and the heart, since 
they had already learned to regard the world 
as the creation of one eternal Being. In the 
ardor of proselytism and of the diffusion of 
the new creed, they hailed the historical trans- 
formation of the earthly endeavour after 
temporal acquisitions and pleasures into a 
providential preparation for the heavenly 
kingdom." 

It very early resulted that Christianity came 
in contact with the contemporaneous philoso- 
phy. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and others, 
were working at the same problem which oc- 
cupied the prophets of Israel, and in many 
ways the schools of Greece were the forerun- 
ners of Christianity . Some of the early fathers 
recognized a Christian element in Plato, and 
they sought to explain the striking resem- 
blance between the doctrines of Plato and 
those of Christianity. Justin was, as he him- 

117 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

self relates, an enthusiastic admirer of Plato 
before he found in the Gospel that full satis- 
faction which he had sought earnestly, but in 
vain, in philosophy. And, although the Gos- 
pel stood infinitely higher in his view than 
the Platonic philosophy, yet he regarded the 
latter as a preliminary stage to the former. 
Justin was successively, as he says in his 
Dialogues, a Stoic, a Peripatetic, a Pythago- 
rean, and a follower of Plato, and hoped to 
have finally reached the goal of intellectual 
contentment in the Platonic philosophy. 

Clement of Alexandria tried to harmonize 
Greek philosophy and Christianity, an inde- 
pendent reason, and an authority based on 
tradition. He says: — "I give the name phi- 
losophy to that which is really excellent in all 
the doctrines of the Greek philosophers, and 
above all to that of Socrates, such as Plato 
describes him to have been. The opinion of 
Plato upon ideas is the true Christian and or- 
thodox philosophy. These intellectual lights 
among the Greeks have been communicated 
by God himself/' 

Origen was a student of the doctrines of 

118 



RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY 

Plato, Pythagoras, and the Stoics, and in his 
Stromata he compares the doctrines of Chris- 
tianity with the teachings of the philosophers, 
particularly those of Plato, confirming the 
former by the latter. Many of the Greek 
Fathers strove to base their apologetics upon 
the theism and ethics of Plato, and even to 
court the mysteries of the trinity, the incar- 
nation, and the atonement, in terms of Pla- 
tonic metaphysics. 

It was at Alexandria that Greek and Roman 
philosophy and Jewish religion, and Oriental 
mysticism met each other face to face, and 
were all struggling for preeminence and mutu- 
ally influencing each other. All the previous 
systems were struggling together, but with no 
satisfactory result from the conflict. Nothing 
was settled, every one was groping, no one 
was recognized as "one having authority." 
One attempt to mediate between these con- 
trasts was made from the Jewish side by Philo 
the Jew. In harmony with the ideas of his 
nation he derived all philosophy and useful 
knowledge from the Mosaic record. His 
power of appreciating and assimilating Greek 

n 9 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

conceptions is admirable, but he did not hesi- 
tate to wrest Scripture to his use by various 
allegorical interpretations, asserting that man 
had fallen from his primitive wisdom and 
purity; that physical inquiry was of very little 
avail, but that an innocent life and burning 
faith are what we must trust to. In this re- 
spect he followed the Stoics, who liked to 
dissolve the Greek myths into abstract ideas, 
to reduce to simple observations the images 
and personifications contained in the tradi- 
tions of the popular religion ; and the method 
they employed was the allegory. The attempt 
of Philo at a combination of Greek and He- 
brew wisdom, was a process of assimilation of 
these two elements, which had gone on for a 
long time at Alexandria. It may be traced 
back even to the translators of the Septua- 
gint. The influence of Greek thought on the 
minds of the translators of the Septuagint is 
often seen, by the suggestion for a Platonic in- 
terpretation. The Platonism of this period, 
however, was not so much a regularly consti- 
tuted school as a pervading influence which 
had impressed certain of its tendencies, more 

1 20 



RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY 

or less strongly, upon most of the religious 
and philosophic speculations of the time. 

Another attempt to mediate between Greek 
philosophy and Judaism was made from the 
Greek side by the Neo-Platonists. It was the 
last form of philosophy which the Greek civ- 
ilization developed, and stood in a curious 
relation to Christianity, alternately attracting 
and repulsing it. Their expositions of the re- 
lations between God and the world, the divine 
and human, spirit and matter, are often in- 
genious. But in their speculations that which 
is specifically Greek is lost. 

This new philosophy may more properly 
be called a theosophy, although it also in- 
clined towards dogmatism, mysticism, asceti- 
cism, and even thaumaturgy. Although firmly 
planted on the basis of the preceding Greek 
philosophy, it may be considered a new mani- 
festation of the genuine creative power of the 
Greek spirit. It attained its highest principle, 
from which all the rest was derived, by means 
of ecstacy, by a mystical self-destruction of 
the individual person. They considered the 
spiritual knowledge of religion to be attain- 

121 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

able only by the philosophers, who lived in 
contemplation. The new Platonists took 
some of the more popular and especially 
Oriental conceptions of Plato, and by an artful 
admixture of truth and falsehood, they com- 
bined many superstitions into their system. 
The doctrine of Plato was fused with the most 
important elements in the Aristotelian and 
Stoic systems and with Oriental speculations. 
Platonism awakened an indefinite desire 
after the supernatural, and after a communion 
with the invisible world, which it was unable to 
satisfy. In fact, as Hegel says, " the peculiarity 
of the Platonic philosophy is precisely this 
direction towards the supersensuous world, 
— it seeks the elevation of consciousness into 
the realm of spirit. The Christian religion 
has also set up this high principle, that the 
internal spiritual essence of man is his true 
essence, and has made it the universal prin- 
ciple." In the course of time, it was through 
the source of the Neo-Platonists that errors 
and corruptions crept into the church, but it 
also from the same source received no small 
addition, both to its numbers and its strength. 

122 



RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY 

Says Santayana, 1 " Neo-Platonism respond- 
ed as well as Christianity to the needs of the 
time, and had besides great external advan- 
tages in its alliance with tradition, with civil 
power, and with philosophy. If the demands 
of the age were for a revealed religion and an 
ascetic morality, Neo-Platonism could satisfy 
them to the full. . . . But the avenues of ap- 
proach which it had chosen and the principle 
which had given form to its system foreor- 
dained it to failure as a religion. The avenue 
was dialectic, and the principle the hypostasis 
of abstractions. " 

The great exponent of Neo-Platonism, 
Plotinus, held philosophy to consist in a 
mental flight from this world to a higher re- 
gion, in becoming " like God," an ascent to 
the Idea of the Good. His theory was a 
combination of the theologies of Parmenides, 
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, but he found 
the germs, at least, of all the doctrines in 
Plato. After the death of the Emperor Julian, 
Neo-Platonism declined and finally became a 
scholastic tradition, but it had been to many 

1 Interpretations of Poetry and Religion, p. 76. 

123 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

a bridge, as Augustine said, which led them 
to Christianity, and besides this, Neo-Pla- 
tonism exercised a discernible influence on 
the historical development of Christianity, 
and more especially on the mysticism of 
Western theology during the middle ages. 

From the speculative side of the church 
sprang the philosophical heretics. The oldest 
of these were the Gnostics. Gnostic means 
one that knows, and the word seems to have 
been applied to all the heretics whose specula- 
tions on nature and being did not agree with 
the speculations approved of by the church. 
Gnosticism stands on the border line between 
the philosophical systems of Plato and the 
Stoics and the Christian system. The Gnostics 
also drew largely from Oriental theosophy 
and the Jewish religion. They seem, indeed, 
to have been of every form of professed re- 
ligion, Jewish, Christian and Pagan, exalting 
their own doctrines above all. In fact, Gnos- 
ticism presents a combination of Persian, 
Chaldaean, and Egyptian doctrines, united to 
conceptions of Oriental or Hindu origin, and 
to the cabalistic science of the Jews. The in- 

124 



RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY 

fluence of Indian philosophy on Gnosticism 
seems undoubted. The Gnostic doctrine of 
the opposition between soul and matter, of 
the personal existence of intellect, will, and 
so forth, and the identification of soul and 
light are derived from the Sankhya system. 
The division, peculiar to several Gnostics, of 
men into three classes is also based on the 
Sankhya doctrine of the three dunas or triple 
constituents of primeval matter. Again, the 
many heavens of the Gnostics are evidently 
derived from the fantastic cosmogony of later 
Buddhism. 

In trying to harmonize Christian revelation 
with its own system it gave up the monothe- 
ism of the Scriptures, and allegorized away, 
in part or in whole, the great facts of Christ's 
work and person. Unlike Greek philoso- 
phies, however, its thought was not methodi- 
cal, but poetical, and charged with Oriental 
imagery and freedom. The Gnostics consid- 
ered their doctrines as superior — 

i. To the pagan rites and symbols, which 
they professed to explain. 

2. To the Hebrew doctrines, the errors 

125 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

and imperfections of which it pretended to 
unfold. 

3. To the common belief of the Chris- 
tian church, which, in the view of the Greeks, 
was nothing but the weak or corrupted en- 
velope of the transcendent Christianity of 
which they claimed to be the depositaries. 

Influenced by Greek philosophy, the Gnos- 
tics represented experimental Christianity as 
knowledge rather than faith, and made knowl- 
edge the standard of the moral condition. 

The influence of Gnosticism was good in 
arousing the church to a clearer definition of 
her fundamental doctrines, and gave her an 
impulse towards thought, and a more com- 
prehensive discussion of doctrine. 

It is interesting to note how the pagan 
Stoic philosophy was revived again in the 
sixth century by Boethius. He became the 
connecting link between the logical and meta- 
physical science of antiquity and the scientific 
attempts of the middle ages. His Consolations 
of Philosophy exercised a very profound influ- 
ence upon the thought and feeling of nascent 
Christendom. 

126 



RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY 

It is difficult to trace the influence of Greek 
philosophy, the logical and metaphysical sci- 
ence of antiquity, upon mediaeval thought. 
Boethius was a thorough student of Greek 
philosophy, and in an uncompleted work he 
had endeavored to reconcile the philosophies 
of Plato and Aristotle. During the century 
in which he lived Boethius shone forth with 
the brightest lustre in the republic of letters, 
as a philosopher, an orator, a poet, and a 
divine. His greatest work, De Consolatione 
Philosophiae, was read during the middle ages 
with the greatest reverence by all Christen- 
dom. King Alfred translated it into Anglo- 
Saxon, and Thomas Aquinas wrote a com- 
mentary on it. In the fourteenth century 
Chaucer made an English translation, and be- 
fore the sixteenth century it was translated 
into German, French, Italian, Spanish, and 
Greek. We know what position it occupies 
in the spiritual development of Dante. 

The Consolatio is theistic in its language, 
but affords no indication that Boethius was a 
Christian. This work is tinctured with the 
Stoic philosophy, and thus its great influence 

127 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

in promulgating the Stoic doctrine among the 
scholars of later times. " It was the last work 
dealing with Greek philosophy, prior to the 
breaking up of the empire, which stayed the 
study of the literature of Greece for nearly a 
thousand years. The last voice which sounded 
from the old classical civilization through the 
thousand years during which Western Christ- 
endom was growing to its manhood, was that 
of this very noble teacher of the Stoic school. 
Through Boethius, accordingly, Stoicism has 
become an appreciable factor in the thought 
of Christendom, and carries on the ancient 
philosophy into the life of the modern 
world." r Although Aristotle, called par emi- 
nence "the philosopher," dominated the minds 
of the scholars for three or four hundred years, 
yet during that time not one unequivocal 
truth was added to the domain of philosophy. 
Occasionally, however, the Stoic system found 
its champions and exponents, such as Justus 
Lipsius ( 1 547—1 606), whose edition of Tacitus 
is almost epoch-making in the completeness 
and elaboration of its exhaustive commentary. 
1 Brown, Stoics and Saints, p. 76. 

128 



SOME ROMAN STOICS 



IX 
EPICTETUS 

Very little is known of the life of Epicte- 
tus. The year of his birth is not known, he 
must have been born, however, before the 
end of Nero's reign, 68 a.d., probably during 
one of the last eight years, else he could not 
have been more than twenty-one when Domi- 
tian published that edict against philosophers, 
and " cleared Rome of what most shamed 
him," in 89 a.d., in consequence of which Ep- 
ictetus retired from Rome to Nicopolis, in Epi- 
rus, a city built by Augustus to commemorate 
the victory of Actium. We know that he was 
born at Hierapolis in Phrygia, a town on the 
Lycus, not far from Laodicea and Colopae. Ep- 
ictetus was a slave of Epaphroditus, a profli- 
gate freedman of the emperor Nero, and who 
had been one of his body-guard. The names 
and condition of his parents are unknown, but 
he appears to have come of a humble stock, 

I 3 I 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

and Simplicius, the commentator on the En- 
cheiridion, says that he was sickly, deformed, 
and lame from a very early age. Origen pre- 
served an anecdote of him, that when his mas- 
ter put his leg in the torture, Epictetus quietly 
said, " You will break it " ; and when he did 
break it, only observed, cc Did I not tell you 
that you would do so ? " This circumstance is 
adduced by Celsus in his famous controversy 
with Origen as an instance of Pagan fortitude 
equal to anything which Christian martyrol- 
ogy had to show. 

We are not told how Epictetus managed to 
effect his freedom, but he could not have been 
a slave when he left Rome in consequence of 
the edict against philosophers. We learn that 
Epictetus was permitted to attend the lectures 
of C. Musonius Rufus, a Stoic philosopher. 
Epictetus refers to Rufus in his Discourses, and 
he evidently had for him a great admiration. 
cc It is not easy," says Epictetus, cc to train ef- 
feminate youths, any more than it is easy to 
take up whey with a hook. But those of fine 
nature, even if you discourage them, desire in- 
struction all the more. For which reason Ru- 

132 



EPICTETUS 

fus often discouraged pupils, using this as a 
criterion of fine and of common natures; for he 
used to say, that just as a stone, even if you 
fling it into the air, will fall down to the earth 
by its own gravitating force, so also a noble 
nature, in proportion as it is repulsed, in that 
proportion tends more in its own natural 
direction/ ' In his Discourse on Ostentation, 
Epictetus says that Rufus was in the habit of 
remarking to his pupils, " If you have leisure 
to praise me, I can have done you no good." 
" He used indeed so to address us that each 
one of us, sitting there, thought that some one 
had been privately telling tales against him in 
particular, so completely did Rufus seize hold 
of his characteristics, so vividly did he por- 
tray our individual faults." 

Gamier, the author of a Memoire sur les ou- 
vrages d'Epictete, says : that Epictetus was in- 
debted " apparently for the advantages of a 
good education to the whim, very common at 
the end of the Republic and under the first 
emperors, among the great of Rome to reckon 
among their numerous slaves, grammarians, 
poets, rhetoricians, and philosophers, in the 

133 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

same way as rich financiers in these later ages 
have been led to form at a great cost rich and 
numerous libraries. This supposition is the 
only one which can explain to us, how a wretch- 
ed child, born as poor as Irus, had received a 
good education, and how a rigid Stoic was the 
slave of Epaphroditus, one of the officers of 
the imperial guard. For we cannot suspect that 
it was predilection for the Stoic doctrine and 
for his own use, that the confidant and the min- 
ister of the debaucheries of Nero would have 
desired to possess such a slave." 

It is a question whether Epictetus ever re- 
turned to Rome. After Hadrian became em- 
peror (a.d. 117), Epictetus was treated with 
favor, as we learn from Spartian's life of Ha- 
drian, but there is no evidence of any of his 
discourses having been delivered at Rome, but 
they contain frequent mention of Nicopolis. 
At Nicopolis Epictetus opened a school where 
he taught his philosophy until he became an 
old man. Suidas says that he lived until the 
reign of Marcus Aurelius, but Aulus Gellius, 
writing during the reign of the first Antonine, 
speaks of Epictetus as being dead. " Epicte- 

*34 



EPICTETUS 

tus, a slave, maimed in body, an Irus in pov- 
erty, and favored by the Immortals." 

Epictetus lived for a long while in a small 
hut, with no other furniture than a bed and 
a lamp, and without an attendant. However, 
he adopted and brought up a child whom a 
friend of his was about to expose to death, on 
account of his poverty. He was obliged also 
to take a woman into his house as a nurse for 
the child. We learn from Lucian that Epic- 
tetus was never married. We are also told by 
Lucian that on the death of Epictetus, his 
lamp was purchased by some enthusiastic ad- 
mirer, for three thousand drachmas, or over 
five hundred dollars of our currency. Lucian 
ridicules this purchaser, as hoping to acquire 
the wisdom of Epictetus by study over it. 

We are told by Arrian, in his preface to 
the Discourses, that he was a powerful and ex- 
citing lecturer ; and according to Origen, his 
style was superior to that of Plato. 

Epictetus wrote nothing ; and all that we 
have under his name was written by his pupil 
Arrian, afterwards the historian of Alexander 
the Great, who, as he tells us, took down in 

i35 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

writing the philosopher's discourses. Arrian 
had become a disciple of Epictetus during his 
residence at Rome. Like Xenophon, he 
united the literary with the military character, 
and while prefect of Cappadocia he distin- 
guished himself by his valor in the war 
against the Massagetae. No less than seven 
of the epistles of Pliny the younger are ad- 
dressed to Arrian. He was a prolific writer, 
but we are interested here with the conver- 
sations of his teacher. There were originally 
eight books of them, besides the Encheiridion, 
which was compiled from them, and an ac- 
count of the life and death of Epictetus. Only 
four of the original eight books are extant. 
These, with the Encheiridion, and a few frag- 
ments preserved in quotations by various 
authors, are all that we know of his teachings. 

The following preface to the Discourses, was 
written by Arrian in the form of a letter to a 
friend, Lucius Gellius, which indirectly throws 
some light on the origin of the Encheiridion : — 

" I did not write the words of Epictetus in 
the manner in which a man might write such 
things. Neither have I put them forth among 

136 



EPICTETUS 

men, since, as I say, I did not even write them 
(in literary form). But whatever I heard him 
speak, these things I have endeavored to set 
down in his very words, that having written 
them I might preserve to myself for future 
times a memorial of his thought and un- 
studied speech. Naturally, therefore, they are 
such things as one man might say to another 
on the impulse of the moment, not such as 
he would write in the idea of finding readers 
long afterwards. Such they are, and I know 
not how, without my will or knowledge, they 
fell among men. But to me it matters little 
if I shall appear an incompetent writer, and 
to Epictetus not at all, if any one shall despise 
his words. For when he was speaking them it 
was evident that he had only one aim — to 
stir the minds of his hearers towards the best 
things. And if, indeed, the words here written 
should do this, then they will do, I think, 
that which the words of philosophers ought 
to do. But if not, let those who read them 
know this, that when he himself spoke them 
it was impossible for the hearer to avoid feel- 
ing whatever Epictetus desired he should feel. 

i37 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

And if his words, when they are merely words, 
have not this effect, perhaps it is that I am in 
fault, perhaps it could not have been other- 
wise. " 

In the sixth century an elaborate commen- 
tary on the Encheiridion was written in Greek, 
by Simplicius, a native of Cilicia, who also 
wrote a commentary on Aristotle. Simplicius 
states that the Encheiridion was put together 
by Arrian, who selected from. the Discourses of 
Epictetus what he considered to be most use- 
ful, and most necessary, and most adapted to 
move men's minds. Each chapter is dissected, 
discussed, and its lessons applied. It was one 
of the most valuable moral treatises that has 
come down to us from antiquity, and, as Sim- 
plicius says, it tells us what kind of man Epic- 
tetus was. 

Epictetus was the prophet, preacher, and 
theologian of the Stoic sect. A figure of 
unique grandeur, with the moral stamina of 
Socrates, and a reverent piety, no one, as Pas- 
cal shows, among philosophers, has more truly 
recognized man's duties toward God and him- 
self. No other philosopher before him has re- 

138 



EPICTETUS 

vealed precepts so much in accordance with 
the spirit of Christianity. Epictetus formu- 
lated clearly enough the doctrine which was 
expressed in the hymn of Cleanthes, that we 
are the offspring of God, and he rises to a 
height of lyric fervor when he speaks of the 
providence of God, of the moral beauty of 
his works, and the strange insensibility of 
ungrateful men. He felt he owed all to God; 
that all was his gift, and that we should be 
grateful not only for our bodies, but for our 
souls, and reason, by which we attain to great- 
ness. And if God has given us a priceless gift, 
we should be contented, and not even seek to 
alter our external relations, which are doubt- 
less for the best. We should wish, indeed, for 
only what God wills and sends, and we should 
avoid pride and haughtiness, as well as dis- 
content, and seek to fulfill our allotted part. 
Nowhere in heathen literature do we find 
such a joyful conception of God and his 
beneficence as in the following passage: — 

"For if we had understanding, ought we 
to do anything else both jointly and severally 
than to sing hymns and bless the Deity, and 

139 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

to tell of his benefits ? Ought we not, when 
we are digging and ploughing and eating, to 
sing this hymn to God ? c Great is God who 
has given us such implements with which we 
shall cultivate the earth; great is God who 
has given us hands, the power of swallowing 
our food, imperceptible growth, and the pow- 
er of breathing while we sleep.' This is what 
we ought to sing on every occasion, and to 
sing the greatest and most divine hymn for 
giving us the faculty of comprehending these 
things and using a proper way. ... I am a ra- 
tional creature, and I ought to praise God; 
this is my work : I do it, nor will I desert this 
post so long as I am allowed to keep it; and 
I exhort you to join in this same song." 

Says Canon Farrar, 1 "There is an almost 
lyric beauty about these expressions of resig- 
nation and faith in God, and it is the utter- 
ance of such warm feelings toward Divine 
Providence that constitutes the chief origi- 
nality of Epictetus. It is interesting to think 
that the oppressed heathen philosopher found 
the same consolation, and enjoyed the same 

Seekers after God, p. 197. 

140 



EPICTETUS 

contentment, as the persecuted Christian 
apostle. 'Whether ye eat or drink/ says St. 
Paul, c or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory 
of God.' f Think of God/ says Epictetus, 
' oftener than you breathe. Let discourse of 
God be renewed daily more surely than your 
food/ " 

Epictetus would not have his disciples rest 
content with the selfish hope of saving their 
own souls ; rather, he would have them ever 
think of the human brotherhood, and live 
not for themselves but for the world. As a 
child of God, he must imitate and obey him ; 
as a citizen of the world, he must have no self- 
ish interests ; as a brother to his fellow men, 
he must love and help them, being members 
one of another. Epictetus speaks of the true 
philosopher as set apart by a special call, 
anointed with the unction of God's grace to a 
missionary work of lifelong self-devotion, as 
the apostle of a high social creed. He said 
that heaven's wrath would light on him who 
intruded rashly into a ministry so holy. 

Epictetus insists, as few creeds have ever 
done, upon the strength and dignity of man- 

141 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

hood. All men are brothers, since all have in 
the same degree God, for their father. Man, 
therefore, who and whatever else he may be, 
is the object of our solicitude, simply as be- 
ing man. No hostility and ill-treatment should 
quench our benevolence. No one is so low 
but that he has claims on the love and justice 
of his fellow men. Even the slave is a man 
deserving our esteem, and able to claim from 
us his rights. The same thought leads Epic- 
tetus to give a wider range to the conceptions 
of nationality and race, and advises all men 
to call themselves citizens of the world when 
asked to what country they belong, and not 
say that they are an Athenian or Corinthian. 
Epictetus would have us always ready to 
resign the blessings which God's providence 
has lent us for awhile. Cf Never say about 
anything I have lost it, but say I have re- 
stored it. Is your child dead ? It has been 
restored. Is your wife dead? She has been 
restored. Has your estate been taken from 
you ? Has not this, then, also been restored ? 
c But he who has taken it from me is a bad 
man.' But what is it to you by whose hands 

142 



EPICTETUS 

the giver demanded it back ? So long as he 
may allow you, take care of it as a thing 
which belongs to another, as travelers do with 
their inn." 

Epictetus mentions three topics or classes 
under which the whole of moral philosophy 
is comprehended. There are the desires and 
aversions, the pursuits and avoidances, or the 
exercise of active powers, and the assents 
which are given by the understanding. His 
moral precepts are mainly summed up in two 
words: endure and abstain. He urges con- 
tentment upon the principle that all things 
occur under the allotment of Providence, that 
is, that an inexorable fate presided over all 
things. 

Epictetus illustrated the difference of his 
age from that of Plato and also of Chrysippus, 
in that he practically abandoned all specula- 
tion, and confined himself to dogmatic prac- 
tical ethics. While he accepted and handed on 
the speculative basis of morality as laid down 
by the earlier Stoics, his real strength was 
in his preaching and teaching. He called his 
school a " healing-place for diseased souls." 

H3 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

Says he : — " Before all, must the future 
teacher of the human race undertake himself 
to extinguish his own passions, and say to 
himself, my own soul is the material at which 
I must work, as does the carpenter at wood 
and the shoemaker at leather." 



144 



X 

SENECA 

Lucius Ann^eus Seneca was born in Cor- 
dova, Spain, about 8 B.C. His father, M. An- 
naeus Seneca, a rhetorician, was a man of 
considerable wealth, enjoying the privileges 
of Roman knighthood, and the friendship of 
many distinguished Romans. He was a na- 
tive of Spain, but lived a good part of his 
life in Rome. While visiting Spain he mar- 
ried H el via, and had by her three sons. The 
youngest, Mela, was the father of the poet 
Lucan, and shared in the misfortunes of that 
unlucky poet. The eldest son was adopted 
by his father's friend, Gallio, and became the 
Roman governor of Greece who cc cared for 
none of these things." 1 The second son, 
Lucius Annaeus, when a child, was brought 
by his father to Rome, where he was trained in 
his father's art, but subsequently forsook rhet- 
1 Acts xviii, 12—17. 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

oric for philosophy. He traveled in Greece 
and Egypt ; and, in obedience to his father's 
wishes, he pleaded in courts of law, and as an 
orator achieved considerable success. But his 
success as an advocate exposed him to the 
dangerous jealousy of Caligula, and he final- 
ly left the bar, fearing the vengeance of Calig- 
ula, who sought to destroy him, but spared his 
life when it was represented to him that Sene- 
ca's health was feeble, and that he would, in 
all probability, be only short lived. He after- 
wards attained the qusestorship, and had al- 
ready risen high in the favor of the Emperor 
Claudius, when, through the efforts of Mes- 
salina, the wife of Claudius, who accused 
Seneca of some disgraceful actions with the 
daughter of Germanicus, the brother of Clau- 
dius, he was exiled to Corsica, where he re- 
mained eight years, deriving from philosophy 
what consolation he could, cultivating the 
practical ethics of the Stoic school. 

During his exile, Seneca composed De 
consolatione ad Helviam liber, "On Consola- 
tion, addressed to his mother Helvia," and 
De consolatione ad Polybium liber, "On Con- 

146 



SENECA 

solation, addressed to Polybius." The work 
was addressed to his mother to console her not 
only under the misfortune that had befallen 
her in his sentence, but under all that had 
been experienced by her. The second work 
was addressed to the dissolute freedman Po- 
lybius, a favorite of Claudius, who had lately 
lost a brother, a young man of great promise, 
and contained the most fulsome flatteries in- 
tended for the ears of both. It contains some 
fine passages, but is unworthy of coming 
from the pen of Seneca. Diderot, in his Essay 
on the Life of Seneca, has attacked the authen- 
ticity of the work, and Ruhkoff, one of the 
later editors of Seneca, considers it of doubt- 
ful authority. 

In a.d. 49, Seneca was recalled to Rome, 
and raised to the praetorship by Agrippina, 
when she had destroyed her imperial rival, to 
undertake the education of her son Lucius 
Domitius, afterwards the Emperor Nero, in 
conjunction with Burrus, who was his govern- 
or and military tutor. Under his two tutors 
Nero gave some promise of statesmanlike de- 
velopment, but upon the death of Burrus, 

H7 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

Nero began rapidly to develop the worst side 
of his character, and was soon beyond all re- 
straint. As Tacitus says, " By the death of 
Burrus, Seneca lost the chief support of his 
power. The friend of upright measures was 
snatched away, and virtue could no longer 
make head against the corruptions of a court, 
governed altogether by the wild and profligate. 
By that set of men Seneca was undermined." 
While Seneca was his favorite minister, 
writing the young emperor's addresses to the 
senate, etc., he had obtained great influence 
over his pupil, and he had also taken the 
opportunity to greatly enrich himself, hav- 
ing accumulated 300,000 sestertia, or over 
$ 1 2,000,000 of our money. It is uncertain 
how far Seneca was implicated in the murder 
of Britannicus, but there seems but little 
doubt that he at least consented to the assas- 
sination of Agrippina, which Nero defended 
in a letter to the senate, penned, according to 
Tacitus, by Seneca, condoning at least, and 
justifying the deed as a political necessity. 
Seneca now became the object of popular 
censure, particularly after being attacked by 

148 



SENECA 

Suillius, who accused him of usury, avarice, 
and rapacity. Nero listened to evil counsellors, 
who charged Seneca with having exorbitant 
wealth, above the condition of a private citi- 
zen; he was accused of courting the affections 
of the people, and, by the grandeur of his 
villas, and the beauty of his gardens, hoping 
to vie with imperial splendor. In matters of 
taste and genius, too, and especially in poetic 
composition, he had the hardihood to become 
the rival of his imperial master. Seneca was now 
sixty years of age, and when these accusations 
reached him, he avoided the court, and lived 
an abstemious life, in constant danger. His 
speech to the emperor, in which he offers to 
resign all his wealth and power, and asks per- 
mission to retire, is a fine specimen of apolo- 
getic eloquence. But he was accused of treason, 
and Sylvanus the tribune, by order of Nero, 
surrounded Seneca's magnificent villa, near 
Rome, with a troop of soldiers, and then sent 
a centurion to acquaint him with the em- 
peror's orders, that he should put himself to 
death. Says Tacitus : l — 
1 Annals, xv, lxii. 

149 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

" Seneca heard the message with calm com- 
posure. He called for his will, and being de- 
prived of that right of a Roman citizen by the 
centurion, he turned to his friends, and ( you 
see/ he said, c that I am not at liberty to re- 
quite your services with the last marks of my 
esteem. One thing, however, still remains. I 
leave you the example of my life, the best 
and most precious legacy now in my power. 
Cherish it in your memory, and you will gain 
at once the applause due to virtue, and the 
fame of a sincere and generous friendship/ 
All who were present melted into tears. He 
endeavored to assuage their sorrows ; he of- 
fered his advice with mild persuasion ; he used 
the tone of authority. c Where/ he said, c are 
the precepts of philosophy, and where the 
words of wisdom, which for years have taught 
us to meet the calamities of life with firmness 
and a well-prepared spirit ? Was the cruelty 
of Nero unknown to any of us ? He mur- 
dered his mother ; he destroyed his brother ; 
and, after those deeds of horror, what remains 
to fill the measure of his guilt but the death 
of his guardian and his tutor ? ' 

150 






SENECA 

" Having delivered himself in these pa- 
thetic terms, he directed his attention to his 
wife. He clasped her in his arms, and in that 
fond embrace yielded for a while to the ten- 
derness of his nature. Recovering his resolu- 
tion, he entreated her to appease her grief, 
and bear in mind that his life was spent in a 
constant course of honor and of virtue. That 
consideration would serve to heal affliction, 
and sweeten all her sorrows. Paulina was still 
inconsolable. She was determined to die with 
her husband; she invoked the aid of the exe- 
cutioners, and begged them to end her wretch- 
ed being. Seneca saw that she was animated 
by the love of glory, and that generous princi- 
ple he thought ought not to be restrained. The 
idea of leaving a beloved object to the insults 
of the world, and the malice of her enemies, 
pierced him to the quick. c It has been my 
care/ he said, c to instruct you in that best 
philosophy, the art of mitigating the ills of 
life ; but you prefer an honorable death. I will 
not envy you the vast renown that must at- 
tend your fall. Since you will have it so, we 
will die together. We will leave behind us an 

151 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

example of equal constancy ; but the glory will 
be all your own/ 

" These words were no sooner uttered, than 
the veins of both their arms were opened. At 
Seneca's time of life the blood was slow and 
languid. The decay of nature, and the im- 
poverishing diet to which he had used him- 
self, left him in a feeble condition. He ordered 
the vessels of his legs and joints to be punc- 
tured. After that operation he began to labor 
with excruciating pains. Lest his sufferings 
should overpower the constancy of his wife, 
or the sight of her afflictions prove too much 
for his own sensibility, he persuaded her to 
retire into another room. His eloquence con- 
tinued to flow with its usual purity. He called 
for his secretaries, and dictated, while life was 
ebbing away, that farewell discourse, which has 
been published, and is in everybody's hands." 

In order to hasten his death, Seneca also 
took hemlock, and had himself suffocated in 
a vapor bath. His wife was saved against her 
wishes by the soldiers at the entreaty of her 
slaves and freedmen. Seneca's body was buried 
privately without ceremony, as he had directed 

152 



SENECA 

by his will (a.d. 6$). Owing to his tutor At- 
talus, Seneca early became a vegetarian, but 
his father prevailed upon him to use flesh 
meat lest he should be suspected of abstain- 
ing upon superstitious grounds. However, he 
persistently renounced the two great dainties 
of the time, mushrooms and oysters, because 
they served not to nourishment, but to appe- 
tite. Tacitus says that at one time Seneca 
lived on wild apples, that grew in the woods, 
and his sole drink was water. 

Seneca's extant writings are mainly on 
moral subjects, and consist of Epistles, and 
Treatises on Anger, Consolation, Providence, 
Tranquillity of Mind, Philosophical Con- 
stancy, Clemency, The Shortness of Life, 
A Happy Life, Philosophical Retirement, 
and Benefits. Seneca also wrote seven books 
entitled ghiestiones Naturales, in which he is 
thought to have anticipated some notions re- 
garded as principles in modern physics. " The 
theory of earthquakes," says Humboldt, "as 
given by Seneca, contains the germs of all 
that has been stated in our times concerning 
the action of elastic vapors enclosed in the 

i53 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

interior of the globe. We learn from Seneca 
the point to which the ancients carried their 
scientific researches without the aid of instru- 
ments. " 

TeufFel, 1 referring to the philosophical writ- 
ings of Seneca, says, that they " charm the 
reader by their breadth of view, their large and 
fine observation, their abundance of knowl- 
edge unalloyed with pedantry, their nobility 
of thought and warmth of feeling, and their 
gorgeous style enlivened with all the resources 
of rhetoric." Says Coleridge, " You may get 
a motto for every sect in religion, or live 
thought in morals and philosophy from Sene- 
ca, but nothing is ever thought out by him." 

Seneca was unquestionably the most bril- 
liant figure of his time, and he may also be 
regarded as the most important of the Roman 
Stoic school, for he was the most elaborate 
of all the interpreters of the Stoic philosophy. 
Seneca excels all other writers of antiquity in 
the particular department of morals by which 
he is best known. In many of his educational 
and social doctrines he is surprisingly in ad- 

1 History of Roman Literature, p. 288. 

154 



SENECA 

vance of his age, and it is astonishing how 
penetrating is the knowledge that he displays. 
He became to a certain extent the director of 
conscience, guide, and adviser in all matters, 
bodily as well as spiritual, and he gives minute 
precepts for every circumstance of life. At all 
times he gave the wealth of his knowledge and 
his varied experience to his friends, and ap- 
pealed strongly, and reiterated his appeals to 
men's hearts rather than to convincing their 
intellect. He says, "To knock once at the 
door when you come at night is never enough ; 
the blow must be hard, and it must be sec- 
onded. Repetition is not a fault, it is a neces- 
sity. 

In an age of unbelief and compromise, 
Seneca taught that truth was positive and vir- 
tue objective. His teaching was a refined and 
spiritual Stoicism, yet he culled his precepts 
from every form of doctrine with impartial 
appreciation. He taught how to act so as to 
win happiness here; (i) by subduing the flesh 
to the spirit through feeling, mortification and 
retirement ; (2) by living for one's family, 
friends, and country, and treating slaves and 

i55 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

inferiors kindly as fellow servants in the work 
and welfare of existence; (3) by devotion to 
philosophy as the awakener of conscience and 
the best preparation for death ; (4) by self- 
examination, self-knowledge, simplicity of liv- 
ing, and patience under suffering. " The rem- 
edies of the soul," he says, "have been dis- 
covered long ago ; it is for us to learn how to 
apply them." 

Seneca was too practical to care for abstract 
speculations, but when he places himself un- 
der any banner it is always that of Zeus ; but 
while he started from the Stoic system, its 
barren austerity was toned down, its harsh- 
ness softened, and its crotchets were laid aside. 
His system, however, taken in its main 
outline is rigid enough, but it is full of con- 
cessions, and Seneca deserves praise for the 
cleverness with which he steers over danger- 
ous ground. For instance, he taught that 
riches being indifferent need not be given up, 
that the good rich man differs from the bad 
in spirit, not in externals, etc. He was the 
first moralist to enunciate the brotherhood of 
man, the unholiness of war, the sanctity of 

156 



SENECA 

human life, the rights of slaves, and their 
claims to our affections. 

Seneca was intensely practical, and he had 
many of the noble qualities of an old Roman, 
but he set his ideal too high, and he lacked the 
firmness to live up to his own standard. As 
a man he dishonored the doctrines which he 
expounded and defended with so much elo- 
quence and power. As a writer has said, "He 
was rich, cultivated and famous ; in the fore- 
most rank in the foremost city in the world ; 
the friend, the tutor, the counsellor of the 
imperial masters of the whole realm of civili- 
zation, it was about as hard for him to live 
out the Stoic doctrine, as, according to a 
higher master than Seneca, it is for a rich man 
to enter into the Kingdom of God." r 

" Philosophy," declares Seneca, " depends 
on acts and not on words ; it is disgraceful to 
say one thing and to think and write another. 
The writings of a philosopher ought to be 
capable of application to his own conduct." 
But it is difficult to reconcile the theory and 
the practice, when we consider the immense 

1 Brown, Stoic and Saints, p. 39. 

*57 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

wealth of Seneca, dishonestly obtained, and 
recognize him as the writer of the apology 
for the murder of Agrippina by Nero, her 
son. Tacitus says * futt Mi vero ingenium amoe- 
num et temporis ejus auribus accommodatum. 
" He possessed a most agreeable wit, and 
knew perfectly what was likely to tickle the 
ears of his contemporaries." 

Dio Cassius makes gross charges against 
the private character of Seneca, but they do 
not rest on a particle of evidence. Living as 
he did amidst the splendors and vices of the 
court, a friend of one of Rome's most wicked 
emperors, Seneca lived purely, temperately 
and lovingly. From his earliest days he was 
capable of adopting self-denial as a principle, 
in the very midst of wealth and splendor, and 
all the temptations which they involve, he 
retained the simplicity of his habits, and was 
claimed as a convert to a church with which 
he shows no sympathy. The Fathers of the 
church called him " the divine pagan," and 
they accepted the view that he had adopted 
their faith, so often did his religious and 

1 Annals, xiii, 3 . 

158 



SENECA 

moral maxims approximate to those of Chris- 
tianity. Indeed, some writers, like M. Fleury, 
have endeavored to show that they can only 
be accounted for by the supposition that 
Seneca had some acquaintance with the sacred 
writings. Zeller has shown, however, that the 
statements of Seneca — that this life is a prelude 
to a better ; that the body is a lodging house, 
from which the soul will return to its own 
home ; his joy in looking forward to the day 
which will rend the bonds of the body 
asunder, which he, in common with the early 
Christians, calls the birthday of eternal life ; 
his description of the peace of the eternity 
there awaiting us, of the freedom and bliss of 
the heavenly life, of the light of knowledge 
which will there be shed on all the secrets of 
nature ; his language on the future recognition 
and happy society of souls made perfect ; his 
seeing in death a great day of judgment, 
when sentence will be pronounced on every 
one ; his making the thought of a future life 
the great stimulus to moral conduct here ; 
even the way in which he consoles himself for 
the destruction of the soul by the thought 

l 59 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

that it will live again in another form here- 
after — all contain nothing at variance with 
the Stoic teaching, however near they may 
approach to Platonic or even Christian modes 
of thought. 1 

There has been much discussion regarding 
Seneca's relation to Christianity. Jerome 
speaks of letters which passed between Paul 
and Seneca, and says they were read by many 
(leguntur a pluribus), and he ranks him in the 
catalogue of saints. Augustine also refers to 
this correspondence. But Erasmus and others 
have declared these letters apocryphal, and it 
would be difficult to find any one now who 
would deny this conclusion. However, we 
know that Paul dwelt in Rome (Acts xxviii, 
30; Phil, i, 13 ; 2 Tim. iv, 17), and was ac- 
quainted with Seneca's brother Gallio ( Acts 
xviii, 1 2 sqq.), and possibly he may have met 
Seneca, but how much one was influenced by 
the other we do not know. 

M. Fleury has made an elaborate collec- 
tion of the passages in Seneca's writings which 
seem to be Christian in tone. Seneca's rela- 

1 Zeller, The Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics, p. 219. 

160 



SENECA 

tion to Christianity has been exhaustively- 
treated by Aubertin, 1 and a carefully selected 
list of parallel passages is given by Bishop 
Lightfoot, in an essay in his treatise on the 
"Epistle to the Philippians." 

There are many striking resemblances be- 
tween Seneca and St. Paul, and we even find 
traces of some of the best known parables of 
Christ, as of the sower, and the rich fool, and 
the debtor, and the talents out at usury. He 
speaks of the house built upon the rock ; of 
life regarded as a warfare and a pilgrimage ; 
of the athlete's crown of victory; of hypocrites 
like whited walls, etc. 

Seneca was very urgent that there should 
be a framework of general theory, which would 
serve as a rule of life. The mass of men, he 
says, are weak, irresolute, passionate, and 
forgetful, soon blinded by sophistry, or led 
astray by bad example. The world in which 
they live is full of specious falsehoods and 
misleading maxims. They need, therefore, 
the help, the sympathy, the guidance of a liv- 
ing rule, a voice that can speak with some 

1 Seneque et St. Paul. 

161 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

authority to heart and conscience, friendly 
counsel, proverbial maxims or striking illus- 
trations, which would tend to implant the 
right convictions in the mind. 

Says Seneca, God dwells not in temples of 
wood or stone, nor waits the ministrations 
of human hands ; that he has no delight in 
the blood of victims ; that he is near to all 
his creatures; that his spirit resides in men's 
hearts; that all men are truly his offspring; 
that we are members of one body, which is 
God or nature ; that men must believe in God 
before they can approach him; that the true 
service of God is to be like unto him ; that 
all men have sinned, and none performed all 
the works of the law ; that God is no respect- 
er of nations, ranks, or conditions, but all, 
barbarian, and Roman, bond and free, are 
alike under his all-seeing providence. 



162 



XI 
MARCUS AURELIUS 

Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus have 
been considered to be the real heroes of the 
Stoicism of which Seneca was only the elegant 
preacher, for they both conformed their lives 
to their teaching. Rendall has shown that 
Epictetus is the teacher to whom Marcus 
Aurelius is most allied — in age, in doctrine, 
and in scope of thought. Says Rendall : — 

"In the emphasis, as well as in the sub- 
stance, of their teaching there is a close re- 
semblance; their psychology and their episte- 
mology agree ; they insist on the same main 
ethical dogmas ; they take the same attitude 
towards abstract dialectic, and to rival schools 
of philosophy — Cynic, Epicurean, or Sceptic. 
In their concentration upon practical ethics, 
their recurrence to Socratic formulas, their 
abandonment of Stoic arrogations of certitude 
and indefectibility, their extension and en- 

163 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

forcement of social obligation, their ethical 
realization of the omnipresent immanence of 
God, they occupy the same position towards 
Stoicism/' 1 

Marcus Aurelius was by no means so deep 
or so strong a thinker as Epictetus, but he 
was one of the purest, gentlest, and most 
conscientious of men. His innate benevo- 
lence of heart served to chasten the severity 
of the pure Stoic system. Niebuhr says that 
it is more delightful to speak of him than 
of any man in history, and " if there is any 
sublime virtue, it is his." He adds: "He 
was certainly the noblest character of his 
time ; and I know of no other man who com- 
bined such unaffected kindness, mildness, and 
humility with such conscientiousness and se- 
verity towards himself. ,, 

Nearly five hundred years before Marcus 
Aurelius, Pythagoras had taught the benefit 
and necessity of self-inquiry. Night and 
morning he prescribed for himself and his 
followers an examination. At these times es- 
pecially was it meet to take account of our 

x Rendall, Marcus Aurelius to Himself, ex. 

164 



MARCUS AURELIUS 

soul and its doings; in the evening to ask, 
" Wherein have I transgressed ? what done ? 
what failed to do?" In the morning, " What 
must I do ? wherein repair past days' forget- 
fulness ? " Socrates pressed this introspection 
upon his followers and taught that it was the 
duty of every man to know himself. Know 
thyself, that is, to realize thyself; by obedi- 
ence and self-control come to thy full stature ; 
be in fact what you are in possibility ; satisfy 
yourself, in the only way in which true self- 
satisfaction is possible, by realizing in your- 
self the law which constitutes your real being. 
This introspection occupied the attention of 
many philosophers. Men were searching into 
their relations with each other, their duties to 
each other, with the idea to inspire them, that 
brotherhood, love and kindness, and not en- 
mity, was the normal relation to mankind. 

With Marcus Aurelius, his whole life was 
given to self-inquiry. There was in him a cer- 
tain childlike piety which he owed, not en- 
tirely to Stoicism, but, as he says, to the 
influence of a pious mother on his education. 
He often speaks not only of contentment, 

165 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

but of joy in God, and in all the mercies with 
which he crowned his life. He is confident 
that all the woes and wrongs of life, and even 
death itself, cannot be evils, since God allows 
them to exist within the sphere of his be- 
nign and righteous reign. One of his rules 
was to fix his thoughts as much as possible 
on the virtues of others, rather than on their 
vices. " When thou wishest to delight thy- 
self, think of the virtues of those who live 
with thee — the activity of one, the modesty 
of another, the liberality of a third, and some 
other good quality of a fourth." 

Says Marcus Aurelius, " Men exist for the 
sake of one another. Teach them or bear with 
them." "The best way of avenging thyself is 
not to become like the wrongdoer." "If any 
man has done wrong, the harm is his own. But 
perhaps he has not done wrong." " Believe 
that men are your brethren and you will love 
them." 

Marcus Aurelius taught that our fellow 
men ought to be loved from the heart. They 
ought to be benefited, not for the sake of 
outward decency, but because the benefactor 

1 66 



MARCUS AURELIUS 

is penetrated with the joy of benevolence, and 
thereby benefits himself. Whatever hinders 
union with others has a tendency to separate 
the members from the body, from which all 
derive their life ; and he who estranges himself 
from one of his fellow men voluntarily severs 
himself from the stock of mankind. 

" If any one can show me that I do not 
think or act correctly, I will change gladly, 
for I seek the truth, by which no one was 
ever harmed." " It is not right that I should 
give myself pain, for I have never given it 
willingly to another." " It is a great thing to 
live in truth and justice, with kind feelings 
even to the lying and unjust." " He who 
wrongs me is my kinsman in unity of the 
spirit and divine sonship, and I cannot be 
angry with my brother." " Let me remember 
that men exist for each other, and that they 
do wrong unwillingly." " It is peculiarly hu- 
man to love even those who do wrong." 
When asked if he had seen the gods or had 
learned of their existence, Aurelius replied, 
" I have never seen any soul, and yet I treat 
it with reverence ; so, also, when I constantly 

167 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

experience the power of the gods, I learn to 
recognize their existence, and I honor them." 
Aurelius realized the distinction between an 
outward abstinence from evil, and a true in- 
ward holiness, and recognized the sinfulness 
of all mankind. " When thou seest another 
sin, think that thou thyself sinnest sometimes, 
and art just such an one thyself. And even 
though thou abstainest from many sins, yet 
thou hast within thee the inclination to such 
practices, though from fear, from vanity, or 
some similar disposition, thou avoidest them." 
Aurelius was by turns the accused, the 
witness, advocate and judge. No more noble 
thoughts, or pure and lofty spiritual utter- 
ances have issued from the heathen world. He 
recognized that the universe is wisely ordered, 
that every man is part of it or must conform 
to that order which he cannot change, that 
whatever the Deity has done is good, and 
that all mankind are brothers, and that it is 
the duty of every man to love and cherish 
his brethren and try to make them better, 
even those who would do him harm. It was 
a tenet of ancient philosophy that the life of 

168 



MARCUS AURELIUS 

the wise man should be a contemplation of, 
and a preparation for, death. 

The keynote of the life of Aurelius we 
find in his saying, "Since it is possible that 
thou may est depart from life this very mo- 
ment, regulate every act and thought accord- 
ingly." Aurelius believed that life is the 
presence of God ; the course of the world is 
the evolution of Providence ; the hand of the 
Deity is operative everywhere ; above all his 
voice is articulate within man's self, as his in- 
dwelling life and soul. In philosophy sought 
for and found, justice, truth, wisdom, and 
courage, lie the cardinal virtues of Stoicism. 
Yet, while firmly believing in the tenets of 
the Stoics, Aurelius was broad-minded, and 
so loved freedom of thought, that he made 
an impartial distribution of the lectureships in 
philosophy among the four great schools, so 
that Platonists, Aristotelians, and Epicureans 
were paid for proclaiming their views. 

The contemplative Stoicism of Aurelius 
proceeded from philosophic speculation, and 
a resignation which could coolly contemplate 
even the annihilation of our personality ; but 

169 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

he had no sympathy with calmness and resig- 
nation that arose from a living faith. As 
Neander says, the spirit with which the Chris- 
tian martyrs met death and even sought it, 
appeared to Aurelius a mere delusion of en- 
thusiasm. Says Aurelius, " The soul must be 
prepared when it must leave the body, either 
to be extinguished, or to be dissolved, or to 
remain a little longer with the body. This 
readiness must proceed from free choice, and 
not from mere obstinacy, as the Christians ; 
and it must also be the result of contempla- 
tion, and a lofty spirit, without any theatrical 
effect, so that a man should be able to per- 
suade another to the same course." 

While Aurelius was one of the most be- 
nign, philanthropic, and conscientious rulers 
who ever adorned a throne, yet in his reign 
the Christians were subjected to persecutions 
more severe than even under Nero. He could 
see in Christianity only a " foolish and bound- 
less" superstition; and he felt compelled, as 
Roman emperor, from political as well as re- 
ligious motives, to protect the religion of the 
state from its pronounced enemies. He sought 

170 



MARCUS AURELIUS 

to base the stability of the throne on a rigid 
morality, on self-denial and self-sacrifice. The 
educated Romans looked with disdain upon a 
doctrine which required only a blind belief; 
they demanded philosophical grounds for what 
they believed. 

Celsus, the first writer against Christianity, 
a broadly and philosophically educated schol- 
ar, and a friend of the noted satirist, Lucian of 
Samosata, makes it a matter of mockery, that 
laborers, shoemakers, farmers, and the more 
ignorant class of men, should be zealous 
preachers of the Gospel, and that they chiefly 
addressed themselves to slaves, women, and 
children. A strong argument of Celsus was, 
that the Christians not only set themselves in 
opposition to the religious life of the people, 
but they also opposed the emperor and the 
empire. A ruler there must be, and the rule 
of the emperor is a bulwark against the threat- 
ening danger of the barbarians, on the frontier 
of the empire. But the Christians, by seeking 
to stand separate, striving for the general 
supremacy of their cause, endangered the 
existence of the empire, and prevented the 

171 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

execution of public benefits, which can be 
effected only under a strong and united gov- 
ernment. In the interests of the empire, there- 
fore, and of public order, Christians must be 
made to submit to the whole community, to 
serve the emperor, to assist him in the ruling 
of the empire, and to protect it, thus saving 
civilization from barbarism. 

Aurelius saw in the new religion an im- 
moral superstition, and a mysterious politi- 
cal conspiracy which was secretly spreading 
throughout the empire, and that it con- 
demned the prevalent religion in the strongest 
terms. The Christians rejected all the heathen 
ceremonies, and declared that all the heathen 
religions were false, and this was a declaration 
of hostility against the Roman government. 
Mr. John Stuart Mill draws a lesson from 
the course taken by Aurelius, a most striking 
warning against the danger of interfering with 
the liberty of thought. He says: — 

" If ever any one possessed of power had 
grounds for thinking himself the best and 
most enlightened among his contemporaries, 
it was the emperor Marcus Aurelius. Abso- 

172 



MARCUS AURELIUS 

lute monarch of the whole civilized world, he 
preserved through life not only the most un- 
blemished justice, but, what was less to be 
expected from his stoical breeding, the ten- 
derest heart. The few failings which are at- 
tributed to him were all on the side of indul- 
gence ; while his writings, the highest ethical 
product of the ancient mind, differ scarcely 
preceptibly, if they differ at all, from the most 
characteristic teachings of Christ. This man, 
a better Christian, in all but the dogmatic 
sense of the word, than almost any of the 
ostensibly Christian sovereigns who have 
since reigned, persecuted Christianity. Placed 
at the summit of all the previous attainments 
of humanity, with an open, unfettered intel- 
lect, and a character which led him, of him- 
self, to embody in his moral writings the 
Christian ideal, he yet failed to see that Chris- 
tianity was to be a good and not an evil to 
the world, with his duties to which he was so 
deeply penetrated. Existing society he knew 
to be in a deplorable state. But such as it was, 
he saw, or thought he saw, that it was held 
together, and prevented from being worse, by 

i73 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

belief and reverence of the received divinities. 
As a ruler of mankind, he deemed it his duty 
not to suffer society to fall in pieces, and saw 
not how, if its existing ties were removed, any 
others could be formed which could again 
knit it together. The new religion aimed 
openly at dissolving these ties ; unless, there- 
fore, it was his duty to adopt that religion, it 
seemed to be his duty to put it down. Inas- 
much, then, as the theology of Christianity 
did not appear to him true, or of divine origin 
— inasmuch as this strange history of a cruci- 
fied God was not credible to him, and a sys- 
tem which purported to rest entirely upon a 
foundation to him so wholly unbelievable, 
could not be foreseen by him to be that reno- 
vating agency which, after all abatements, it 
has in fact proved to be, the gentlest and most 
amiable of philosophers and rulers, under a 
solemn sense of duty, authorized the perse- 
cution of Christianity. To my mind, this is 
one of the most tragical facts in all history. 
It is a bitter thought, how different a thing 
the Christianity of the world might have been, 
if the Christian faith had been adopted as the 

*74 



MARCUS AURELIUS 

religion of the empire, under the auspices of 
Marcus Aurelius, instead of those of Con- 
stantine. But it is equally unjust to him, and 
false to truth, to deny, that no one plea which 
can be urged for punishing anti-Christian 
teaching, was wanting to Marcus Aurelius, 
for punishing, as he did, the propagation of 
Christianity. No Christian more firmly be- 
lieves that atheism is false, and tends to the 
dissolution of society, than Marcus Aurelius 
believed the same things of Christianity ; he 
who, of all men then living, might have been 
thought the most capable of appreciating it. 
Unless any one who approves of punishment 
for the promulgation of opinions, flatters him- 
self that he is a wiser and better man than 
Marcus Aurelius — more deeply versed in 
the wisdom of his time — more elevated in 
his intellect above it — more earnest in his 
search for truth, or more single-minded in his 
devotion to it when found — let him abstain 
from that assumption of the joint infallibility 
of himself and the multitude, which the great 
Aurelius made with so unfortunate a result." 
Aurelius speaks of the Christians as obsti- 

175 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

nate fanatics in his Meditations, and he no 
doubt accepted the current prejudices of the 
ruling classes, and neglected to look deeper 
into the real doctrines of the church. How- 
ever, he remained the very loftiest expression 
of that purified Stoicism which bordered on 
Christianity without entering its territory or 
taking anything from it. He is the great link 
or connection between the heathen and Chris- 
tian schools. He brought heathenism as near 
as in its strength and wisdom it could come 
to Christianity; and he seems to carry to a 
higher point and nearer to the Christian faith 
the great religious ideas which formed the 
basis of the Roman Stoic school. "It seems/' 
says M. Martha, "that in him the philosophy 
of heathendom grows less proud, draws nearer 
and nearer to a Christianity which it ignored, 
or which it despised, and is ready to fling it- 
self into the arms of the c Unknown God.' In 
the said Meditations of Aurelius we find a pure 
serenity, sweetness, and docility to the com- 
mands of God, which before him were un- 
known, and which Christian grace has alone 
surpassed. If he has not yet attained to charity 

176 



MARCUS AURELIUS 

in all that fullness of meaning which Christian- 
ity has given to the world, he has already gained 
its unction, and one cannot read his book, 
unique in the history of pagan philosophy, 
without thinking of the sadness of Pascal and 
the gentleness of Fenelon. We must pause 
before this soul, so lofty and so pure, to con- 
template ancient virtue in its softest brilliancy, 
to see the moral delicacy to which profane 
doctrines have attained — how they laid down 
their pride, and how penetrating a grace they 
have found in their new simplicity. " x 

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, the son-in- 
law and successor of Antoninus Pius, was born 
April 25, a.d. 121; he ascended the throne 
in 161, and died March 17, 180. He came 
of a family which had long been settled in the 
south of Spain, and which was summoned 
to Rome to fill the highest offices of the state. 
The father of Marcus Aurelius was Annius 
Verus, who died in his praetorship, and was 
descended from a long line of illustrious men 
who claimed descent from Numa, the second 
King of Rome. His mother, Domitia Cal- 

1 Martha, Les Moralistes sur 1' Empire Romain. 

177 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

villa, was also a lady of consular and kingly 
race. On the death of his father, Marcus 
Aurelius was adopted by his grandfather, 
who spared no pains to give him a good 
education. Aurelius says that from his grand- 
father he learned good morals and the gov- 
ernment of his temper; from the reputation 
and remembrance of his father, modesty and 
manliness ; from his mother, piety and benef- 
icence, and abstinence not only from evil 
deeds, but even from evil thoughts; and, 
further, simplicity of life far removed from 
the habits of the rich. 

His fine qualities early attracted the notice 
of the emperor Hadrian, who used to term 
him Verissimus, a name which Aurelius liked 
well enough in later years to have it put at 
times upon the coins struck in his mints. 
When only seventeen years of age, he was 
adopted, along with Lucius C. Commodus, 
by Antoninus Pius, the successor of Hadrian ; 
and Faustina, the daughter of Pius, was se- 
lected for his wife. In the year 140 a.d. he 
was made consul ; and from this period to the 
death of Pius, in 161 a.d., he continued to 

178 



MARCUS AURELIUS 

discharge the duties of his various offices with 
the greatest promptitude and fidelity. When 
Antoninus Pius was chosen by Hadrian as 
his successor, he was fifty-two years old, and 
he was selected on the express condition that 
he should in turn adopt both Marcus Aure- 
lius and Commodus. But the latter had so far 
disgraced himself by his early profligacy, that 
his adoptive father disinherited him, and pro- 
curing the nomination of Aurelius as sole 
successor by the senate, associated him with 
himself in the empire. On his accession, how- 
ever, Aurelius, who now assumed the name 
of Antoninus, gave an equal share of the 
government to Commodus, who henceforth 
bore the name of Lucius Aurelius Verus, and 
Rome saw for the first time, two co-rulers 
share between them on an equal footing all 
the dignity of absolute power. 

During his early years, before ascending 
the throne, no pains were spared to fit Aure- 
lius for his high station, and the greatest 
teachers of his day took part in his instruc- 
tion. He had a great love of reading, taste for 
antiquities, addiction to philosophy, and ex- 

179 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

treme docility of temperament. Like many- 
young Romans he tried his hand at poetry 
and studied rhetoric. Finally, he abandoned 
poetry and rhetoric for philosophy, and he 
attached himself to the sect of the Stoics. We 
learn from contemporary sources, that " from 
childhood he was of a serious cast"; that his 
demeanor was that of " a courteous gentleman, 
modest and strenuous, grave but affable"; 
that "he never changed his countenance for 
grief or gladness." We read that during three 
and twenty years, he absented himself but two 
nights from the side of Antoninus ; he never 
missed a meeting of the senate, or left before 
its close ; he would give days to the hearing 
of a single case, and extended the days of as- 
size to two hundred and thirty in the year. 

Aurelius has recorded the names of his 
teachers and the obligations which he owed 
to each of them. His gratitude to them was 
warm and profound. This sketch, which was 
written during one of his campaigns, forms 
the first book of his Meditations, and is char- 
acterized by the most unaffected simplicity 
and modesty. 

1 80 



MARCUS AURELIUS 

Of his teachers Fronto was one of the most 
famous. Not many years ago, the letters which 
passed between Fronto and Aurelius were 
found in an old manuscript, over which an- 
other work had been written. From Rusticus 
he learned that his character required improve- 
ment and discipline, and many other things, 
among them, to abstain from fine writing ; 
and he made him acquainted with the memoirs 
of Epictetus. Says he, " From Rusticus, I 
first conceived the need of moral correction 
and amendment ; renounced sophistic ambi- 
tions and essays on philosophy, discourses 
provocative of virtue, or fancy portraiture of 
the sage or the philanthropist ; learned to 
eschew rhetoric and poetry and fine language." 
He gave in after years to Rusticus the credit 
of his conversion from letters to philosophy. 
"It was he who made me feel how much I 
needed to reform and train my character. He 
warned me from the treacherous paths of 
sophistry, from formal speeches of parade 
which aim at nothing higher than applause. 
Thanks to him I am weaned from rhetoric 
and poetry, from affected elegance of style, 

181 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

and can write now with simplicity. From him 
I have learned to concentrate my thoughts 
on serious study, and not to be surprised into 
agreeing with all the random utterance of 
fluent speech." 

Diognetus, Bacchius, Tandasis, and Mar- 
cianus were his chief instructors in philosophy. 
Apollonius taught him freedom of will and 
undeviating steadiness of purpose, and to look 
to nothing else, not even for a moment, ex- 
cept to reason. He taught how to receive 
factitious favors, without either sacrifice of 
self-respect or churlish regard. Then follow 
Alexander the Platonist, and Catulus, and his 
brother Severus, with Thrasea, Helvidius, 
Cato, Dion, and Bentus, from whose lives 
and recorded words he learned " the idea of 
polity in which there is the same law for all, 
a polity administered with regard to equal 
rights and equal freedom of speech, and the 
idea of a kingly government which respects 
most of all the freedom of the governed. " And 
so on through a long list of instructors, with 
a methodical account of what he learned from 
each. 

182 



MARCUS AURELIUS 

Marcus Aurelius was in very poor physical 
health from his boyhood, and was strained by 
overwork, and in later life his power of diges- 
tion and sleep wholly gave way. His private 
life was one of extreme simplicity. His only 
pleasure was in books and meditation, and in 
his family relations. He was one of the gen- 
tlest, purest, and most conscientious of men. 
Yet by the irony of fate, after Aurelius had 
become emperor, he led a most strenuous 
life. His delight was meditation, yet the best 
years of his life were spent in the turmoil of 
camp life. To the gentle heart of Aurelius, 
all war, even when accompanied with victories, 
was extremely distasteful. The surroundings 
and associates of war were harsh and uncon- 
genial, yet his presence was necessary with 
the legions. 

Soon after his accession to the throne an 
inundation of the Tiber caused great ruin 
and distress which ended in a widespread 
famine. Then came the horrors of war and 
rumors of war. First came the Parthian war, 
in which Verus was sent to command, but he 
did nothing. The Parthians defeated and all 

183 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

but destroyed the Roman army, and devas- 
tated with impunity the Roman province of 
Syria. What little success the Romans had was 
not due to Verus, but to other Roman gen- 
erals, but Verus took all the credit. The north 
of Italy was threatened by the rude people 
beyond the Alps, and many years were spent 
by Aurelius in driving back the invaders. A 
formidable insurrection had long been pre- 
paring in the German provinces ; the Britons 
were on the point of revolt, and the Catti were 
waiting for an opportunity to devastate the 
Rhenish provinces. Aurelius spent five years 
in the north, without ever returning to Rome, 
enduring the greatest hardships with the se- 
renity of a philosopher. But the constant 
struggle to preserve his dominions from hos- 
tile invaders, and the hardships of camp life, 
undermined his originally weak condition, 
shattered by perpetual anxiety and fatigue, 
and he died, it is supposed, in Vienna, the 
then Sirmium, on the seventeenth of March, 
a.d. 1 80, in his fifty-ninth year, after a reign 
of twenty years, the greater part of which was 
spent in the most uncongenial work, amid 

184 



MARCUS AURELIUS 

the tumults of perpetual war, and the distrac- 
tion necessarily arising from the government 
of so vast an empire. As a writer has said : 
"The man who loved peace with his whole 
soul, died without beholding it, and yet the 
everlasting presence of war never tempted 
him to sink into a mere warrior. He main- 
tained uncorrupted to the end of his noble 
life, his philosophic and philanthropic aspira- 
tions. After his decease, which was felt to be 
a national calamity, every Roman citizen, and 
many others in distant portions of the empire, 
procured an image or statue of him, which 
more than a hundred years after was still 
found among their household gods." 

It was during his camp life, surrounded by 
uncongenial associates, that Aurelius wrote 
down his thoughts, or reflections, which have 
come down to us as his Meditations. They 
were written, not for effect like Seneca, not 
for instruction like Epictetus, but only for re- 
lief of sleeplessness and solitude, and for no 
eye but his own. Hence the brief, uncon- 
nected and paragraphic form, wherein his 
Meditations have come down to us. They are 

185 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

a collection of maxims and reflections in the 
spirit of the Stoic philosophy, which, with- 
out much connection or skill in composition, 
breathe the purest sentiments of piety and 
benevolence; "yet the centuries still turn to 
him for wisdom; and the thoughts remain 
imperishable, dignifying duty, shaming weak- 
ness, and rebuking discontent." Nowhere else 
is the morality of paganism couched in so pure 
and high and reverent a spirit, and the Medi- 
tations form, as it were, an indispensable sup- 
plement to Holy Writ. 

Matthew Arnold calls Aurelius " perhaps 
the most beautiful figure in history." Lecky 
says that he was "the purest and gentlest 
spirit of all the pagan world." Says Montes- 
quieu, "If there is any sublime virtue it is 
his. I know no other man who combined 
such unaffected kindness, mildness and hu- 
mility with such conscientiousness and sever- 
ity toward himself." Taine pronounces him 
"the noblest soul that ever lived." Says Dr. 
Lightfoot, "As Epictetus gives a higher tone 
to the theology of the Stoic school, so the 
writings of M. Aurelius manifest an improve- 

186 



MARCUS AURELIUS 

ment in its ethical teaching. . . . As a con- 
scious witness of God and a stern preacher 
of righteousness, the Phrygian slave holds a 
higher place : but as a kindly philanthropist, 
conscientiously alive to the claims of all men 
far and near, the Roman emperor commands 
deeper respect. His natural disposition soft- 
ened the harsher features of Stoical ethics. 
The brooding melancholy and the almost 
feminine tenderness are a marked contrast to 
the hard outlines in the portraiture of the 
older Stoics. " 



187 



XII 
SELECTIONS FROM EPICTETUS 1 

i . The imitation of God. 

It is not enough simply to wish to be hon- 
orable and good; it is necessary besides to be 
instructed in certain points; we must inquire 
accordingly, what these are. 

The philosophers tell us that before all 

things it is necessary to learn that God is, and 

that he provides for all things, and that from 

him nothing can be hid — not deeds only, but 

even thoughts and purposes. Next must be 

learned of what nature the gods are; for such 

as they are found to be, he who would please 

and obey them must endeavor with all his 

might to become like unto them. If, e.g., the 

Divine be faithful, so must he be faithful ; if 

free, so must he be free; if beneficent, so must 

he be beneficent; if high minded, so must he 

1 Selections from the "Encheiridion," " Dissertations' ' 
and " Fragments" of Epictetus. 

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do all such things as are agreeable to the 

same. 

i. Divine government of the world. 

We conduct ourselves in the assembly of 
life much as people do at a fair. Beasts are 
brought to be sold, and oxen ; and the greater 
part of the men come to buy and sell, and 
there are some few who come to look at the 
market and to inquire how it is carried on, 
and why, and who fixes the meeting and for 
what purpose. So it is here also in this as- 
sembly (of life) : some, like cattle, trouble 
themselves about nothing except their fodder. 
For to all of you who are busy about posses- 
sions and lands and slaves and magisterial of- 
fices, these are nothing except fodder. But 
there are a few who attend the fair, men who 
love to look on and consider what is the 
world, who governs it. Has it no governor ? 
And how is it possible that a city or a family 
cannot continue to exist, not even the short- 
est time without an administrator and guar- 
dian, and that so great and beautiful a system 
should be administered with such order and 
yet without a purpose and by chance ? There 

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is then an administrator. What kind of ad- 
ministrator and how does he govern ? And 
who are we, who were produced by him, and 
for what purpose ? Have we some connection 
with him and some relation towards him, or 
none ? This is the way in which these few are 
affected, and then they apply themselves only 
to this one thing, to examine the meeting and 
then to go away. What then ? They are rid- 
iculed by the many, as the spectators at the 
fair are by the traders; and if the beasts had 
any understanding, they would ridicule those 
who admired anything else than fodder. 

3. The providence of God. 

Concerning the gods, there are some who 
say that a Divine Being does not exist ; and 
others, that it exists indeed, but is idle and 
uncaring, and hath no forethought for any- 
thing ; and a third class say that there is such 
a Being, and he taketh forethought also, but 
only in respect of great and heavenly things, 
but of nothing that is on the earth ; and a 
fourth class, that he taketh thought of things 
both in heaven and earth, but only in general, 

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and not of each thing severally. And there 
is a fifth class, whereof are Odysseus and 
Socrates, who say, Nor can I move without 
thy knowledge. 

Before all things, then, it is necessary to 
investigate each of these opinions, whether it 
be justly affirmed or no. For if there be no 
gods, how can the following of the gods be 
an end ? And if there are gods, but such as 
take no care for anything, then, also, how can 
the following of them be truly an end ? And 
how, again, if the gods both exist and take 
care for things, yet if there be no communi- 
cation from them to men, aye, and by heaven, 
and even to mine own self? The wise and 
good man, having investigated all these things, 
will submit his own mind to him that gov- 
erneth the universe, even as good citizens to 
the laws of their state. 

4. Omniscience and omnipotence of God. 

On being asked how we could be convinced 
that everything done is observed by God, 
Epictetus replied : Do you not believe that 
all things in the universe are united in one? 

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GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

Yes ! said the other. Well, then, do you not 
think that there must be a sympathy between 
the things of earth and those of heaven ? I 
do, said he. For how else do plants, as if at 
the command of God, when he bids them, 
flower in due season? and shoot forth when 
he bids them shoot, and bear fruit when he 
bids them bear ? and ripen when he bids them 
ripen ? and again they drop their fruit when 
he bids them drop it, and shed their leaves 
when he bids them shed them ? and how else 
at his bidding do they fold themselves to- 
gether, and remain motionless and at rest? 
and how else at the waxing and waning of the 
moon, and the approach and withdrawal of 
the sun, do we behold such a change and re- 
versal in earthly things ? But are the plants 
and our bodies so bound up in the whole, 
and have sympathy with it, and are our spirits 
not much more so ? And our souls being thus 
bound up and in touch with God, seeing, in- 
deed, that they are portions and fragments 
of him, shall not every movement of them, 
inasmuch as it is something inward and akin 
to God, be perceived by him ? But you are 

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able to meditate upon the divine government, 
and upon all divine and all human affairs, 
and to be affected at the same time in the 
senses and in the intellect by ten thousand 
things, and at the same time to assent to 
some and dissent to others, or suspend your 
judgment; and you preserve in your mind so 
many impressions of so many and various 
things, and being affected by them, you strike 
upon ideas similar to earlier impressions, and 
you retain many different arts, and memories 
of ten thousand things ; and shall not God 
have the power to overlook all things, and 
be present with all, and have a certain com- 
munication with all ? But is the sun able to 
illuminate so great a part of the All, and to 
leave so little without light, — that part, 
namely, which is rilled with the shadow of 
the earth, — and shall he who made the sun, 
and guideth it in its sphere, — a small part of 
him beside the whole, — shall he not be capa- 
ble of perceiving all things ? 

But I, saith the man, cannot take heed of 
all these things at once. And who said you 
could do this? that you had equal powers 

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with God? But, nevertheless, he hath placed 
at every man's side a guardian, the genius of 
each man, who is charged to watch over him, 
a genius that cannot sleep, nor be deceived. 
To what greater and more watchful guardian 
could he have committed us? So, when ye 
have shut the doors, and made darkness in 
the house, remember never to say that ye are 
alone; for ye are not alone, but God is there, 
and your genius is there; and what need have 
these of light to mark what ye are doing ? To 
this God it were fitting also that ye should 
swear an oath, as soldiers do to Caesar. But 
those indeed who receive pay swear to prefer 
the safety of Caesar before all things ; but 
ye, receiving so many and great things, will 
ye not swear? Or swearing, will ye not abide 
by it ? And what shall ye swear ? Never to dis- 
obey, never to accuse, never to blame aught 
that he hath given, never unwillingly to do 
or suffer any necessary thing. Is this oath like 
unto that other? The soldiers swear to esteem 
no other man before Caesar; ye to esteem 
yourselves above all. 



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5. 'The great Designer. 

From everything which is or happens in 
the world, it is easy to praise Providence, if a 
man possesses these two qualities — the faculty 
of seeing what belongs and happens to all 
persons and things, and a grateful disposition. 
If he does not possess these two qualities, 
one man will not see the use of things which 
are and which happen; another « will not be 
thankful for them, even if he does know them. 
If God had made colors, but had not made 
the faculty of seeing them, what would have 
been their use ? None at all. On the other 
hand, if he had made the faculty of vision, 
but had not made objects such as to fall under 
the faculty, what in that case also would have 
been the use of it ? None at all. Well, sup- 
pose that he had made both, but had not 
made light? In that case, also, they would 
have been of no use. Who is it, then, who has 
fitted this to that and that to this ? And who 
is it that has fitted the knife to the case and 
the case to the knife ? Is it no one ? And, in- 
deed, from the very structure of things which 

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GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

have attained their completion, we are accus- 
tomed to show that the work is certainly the 
act of some artificer, and that it has not been 
constructed without a purpose. Does, then, 
each of these things demonstrate the work- 
man, and do not visible things and the faculty 
of seeing and light demonstrate him ? If they 
do not, let us consider the constitution of our 
understanding according to which, when we 
meet with sensible objects, we do not simply 
receive impressions from them, but we also 
select something from them, and subtract 
something, and add, and compound by means 
of them these things or those, and, in fact, 
pass from some to other things which, in a 
manner, resemble them ; is not even this suf- 
ficient to move some men, and to induce them 
not to forget the workman ? If not so, let 
them explain to us what it is that makes each 
several thing, or how it is possible that things 
so wonderful and like the contrivances of art 
should exist by chance and from their own 
proper motion. 



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6. Man more than animal. 

We have several points in common with 
the animals. Use is one thing, observation is 
another. God requires of the animals that 
they should simply use and submit to objects 
of sense ; of us that we should observe and 
investigate these. Consequently for them it 
is enough to eat and drink and rest and 
breed, and whatever else each of them per- 
forms; but for us, who have been further en- 
dowed with the faculty of observation, these 
things are not enough. . . . 

Man has been brought into the world by 
God to contemplate him and his works, and 
not only to contemplate these, but to inter- 
pret them. And, therefore, it is a shame for 
man to begin and end where do the animals; 
it is his business rather to begin from the 
point they end at, and to end only where 
Nature in our case ends — namely, with con- 
templation and study and a life in harmony 
with herself. Take heed, then, that ye die not 
without having considered these things. 



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7. Man equal to his fortune. 

Come, then, do you also having observed 
these things look to the faculties which you 
have, and when you have looked at them, say : 
Bring now, O Zeus, any difficulty that thou 
pleasest, for I have means given me by thee 
and the powers for honoring myself through 
the things which happen. You do not so ; but 
you sit still, trembling with fear that some 
things will happen, and weeping, and lament- 
ing, and groaning for what does happen ; and 
then you blame the gods ; for cowardice of 
this kind is sure to be followed by impiety. 
And yet God not only bestowed on us such 
faculties to bear all that may happen without 
being depressed or crushed by it ; but, like a 
good king and true father, accompanied his 
gift with no hindrance, compulsion or re- 
straint, but put it all in our own hands, not 
even reserving to himself any power to pre- 
vent or impede its use. And yet with such 
means at their free disposal, men do not use 
them, do not realize what they have received, 
and from whose hands ; but they sit moaning 

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and groaning, some quite blind as regards the 
giver, and not recognizing their benefactor ; 
while others are sordid enough to resort to 
complaints and accusations against God. Yet, 
while I can show that we have been fitted and 
fashioned to exercise courage and high minded- 
ness, what proof can you show me that we were 
constituted to complain and reproach. 

8. The praise of God. 

Are these the only works of Providence in 
us? — but what may suffice to rightly praise 
and tell them? For had we understanding 
thereof, would any other thing better beseem 
us, either in company or alone, than to hymn 
the Divine Being, and laud him and rehearse 
his gracious deeds? Should we not, as we 
dig or plough or eat, sing this hymn to God. 
Great is God who hath given us such instru- 
ments whereby we shall till the earth; great 
is God, who hath given us hands, and swal- 
lowing, and a stomach; who maketh us to 
grow without our knowledge, and to breathe 
while we sleep. These things it were fitting 
that every man should sing, and to chant the 

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greatest and divinest hymns for this, that he 
hath given us the power to observe and con- 
sider his works and a way of life to follow. 
What then ? Since the most of you have be- 
come blind, should there not be one to fill 
this place, and in the name of all to sing this 
hymn to God? For what else can I do, an 
old man and lame, than sing hymns to God? 
If I were a nightingale I would do after the 
nature of a nightingale ; if a swan, after that 
of a swan. But now I am a reasoning creature 
and it behooves me to sing the praise of God: 
this is my task, and this I do, nor, as long 
as it is granted me, will I ever abandon this 
post. And you, too, I summon to join me 
in the same song. 

9. God's care of individuals . 

Is any good man afraid lest means of sus- 
tenance should fail him ? But they do not fail 
the blind and the lame, and are they likely 
to fail the virtuous? The good soldier never 
wants for some one to pay him ; neither does 
the laborer, nor shoemaker, and yet shall the 
good man want for such? What! Is God so 

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indifferent to his instruments, his ministers, 
his witnesses, whom alone he employs as 
living proofs to the ignorant, that he not 
only exists, but governs all things well, and 
never neglects the interest of man, and that 
to the virtuous, whether living or dead, there 
is no such thing as evil. Well, but how, sup- 
posing that he does not give me food? Is 
not this, however, just what a good general 
does, when he gives me the signal for retreat? 

I obey, I follow, all the while praising my 
commander, and singing his deeds. 

For, as I came into the world when he 
pleased, so again when it pleases him, I de- 
part. And so long as I lived, it was my busi- 
ness to sing praises unto God, both by myself 
and with individuals, and in the presence of 
many. 

10. His real presence in man. 

You, O man, are God's chief work — thou 
art a part of God, thou hast in thee something 
that is a portion of him. Why, then, art thou 
ignorant of thy high ancestry? Why knowest 
thou not whence thou earnest? Wilt thou not 
remember, in thine eating, who it is that eats, 

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and whom thou dost nourish? In society, in 
exercise, in debate, do you not know that it 
is God you keep, exert, and bear about with 
you, although, unhappy man, you are uncon- 
scious of it. Thinkest thou I speak of some 
god of gold and silver, and external to thee ? 
Nay, but in thyself thou dost bear him, and 
seest not that thou defilest him with thine 
impure thoughts and filthy deeds. In the 
presence even of an image of God thou hadst 
not dared to do one of those things which 
thou doest. But in the presence of God him- 
self within thee, who seeth and heareth all 
things, thou art not ashamed of the things 
thou dost both desire and do. O thou unwit- 
ting of thine own nature, and subject to the 
wrath of God. 

1 1 . Man s sonship and brotherhood. 

Next, remember that you are a son. What 
is the profession answering to this character? 
To consider everything of his as belonging 
to a father, to obey him in all things, never 
to complain of him to any one, never to say 
or do anything injurious to him, to yield and 

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give way before him in all things, and work 
with him to the utmost of your power. 

Once more, remember that you are a 
brother ; and to this character corresponds 
the duty of readiness to yield, of compliance, 
of right speech, the never claiming for one's 
self any of the things that depend not on our 
will, but the cheerfully resigning of these, that 
you may have a greater interest in what your 
will can determine. 

12. The ideal philosopher. 

But so much I have to say to you, that 
whosoever shall without God attempt so 
great a matter stirreth up the wrath of God 
against him, and desireth only to behave him- 
self unseemly before the people. For in no 
well-ordered house doth one come in and 
say to himself: I should be the steward of 
the house, else, when the lord of the house 
shall have observed it, and seeth him inso- 
lently giving orders, he will drag him forth 
and chastise him. So it is also in this great 
city of the universe, for here, too, there is a 
master of the house who ordereth each and 

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all, saying to the sun : Thou art the sun ; 
thou hast the power to make thy circuit and 
to constitute the year and the season, and to 
increase and nourish the fruits, and to stir the 
winds, and still them, and temperately to 
warm the bodies of men. Go forth, run thy 
course, and minister thus to the greatest 
things and to the least. Or, thou hast the 
power to lead the host against Ilium, be then 
an Agamemnon. Thou canst fight a duel 
with Hector, be an Achilles. But supposing 
that Thersites came forward and claimed the 
command; either he would not gain it, or else, 
gaining it, he would disgrace himself before 
many witnesses. 

First, in all things that concern thyself, thou 
must appear in nothing like unto what thou 
now doest. Thou must not accuse God nor 
man ; thou must utterly give over pursuit, 
and avoid only those things that are in the 
power of thy will ; anger is not meet for thee, 
nor resentment, nor envy, nor pity, nor com- 
passion — neither amorousness, nor vanity, 
nor a craving even for the smallest luxury. For 
it must be understood that other men shelter 

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themselves by walls and houses and by dark- 
ness when they do such things, and many 
means of concealment have they. One shut- 
teth the door, placeth some one before the 
chamber ; if any one should come, say, he is 
out, he is busy. But in place of all these 
things it behooves the philosopher to shelter 
himself behind his own piety and reverence ; 
but if he doth not, he shall be put to shame, 
naked under the sky. This is his house, this 
his door, this the guards of his chamber, this 
his darkness. For he must not seek to hide 
aught that he doeth, else he is gone, the phi- 
losopher hath perished, the man who lived 
under the open sky, the freeman. He hath 
begun to fear something from without, he 
hath begun to need concealment ; nor can he 
find it when he would, for where shall he hide 
himself, and how P And if by chance this 
tutor, this public teacher, should be found in 
guilt, what things must he not suffer ? And 
fearing these things, can he yet take heart 
with his whole soul to guide the rest of 
mankind ? That can he never : it is impos- 
sible ! 

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GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

First, then, thou must purify thy ruling 
faculty, and this vocation of thine also, say- 
ing : My mind is the material I have to deal 
with, just as wood is to the carpenter, and 
leather is to the shoemaker ; and my work is 
the right employment of objects. Neither the 
body nor its parts have anything to do with 
me. Death ? let it come when it will — death 
either of the whole, or any part of it. What ! 
flee it ? but whither ? Can any one cast me 
altogether out of the universe ? It is impossi- 
ble ; for wheresoever I shall go, there will be 
the sun and moon and stars ; there will be 
visions, omens, and communion with God. 

And furthermore, when he hath thus 
fashioned himself, he will not be content with 
these things, who is a philosopher indeed. 
But know that he is a herald from God to 
men, declaring to them the truth about good 
and evil things, that they have gone astray 
and are seeking the reality of good and evil 
where it is not, and do not consider where it 
is. . . . For the philosopher really is a kind 
of spy, to report what is friendly, and what is 
hostile, to mankind. And having carefully 

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spied out these things by himself, he must 
come and report the exact truth, neither be- 
ing so stricken with panic as to report enemies 
where there are none, nor in any other way 
being confused, or bewildered by vain im- 
pressions. 

In what, then, is the good, seeing that in 
these things it is not? Tell us, thou, my lord 
missionary and spy ! It is there where ye 
deem it not, and where ye have no desire to 
seek it. For did ye desire, ye would have 
found it in yourselves, nor would ye wander 
to things without, nor pursue things alien, as 
if they were your own concerns. Turn to 
your own selves ; understand the natural con- 
ceptions which ye possess. What kind of thing 
do ye take the good to be? Peace? happiness? 
freedom? Come, then, do ye not naturally 
conceive it as great, as precious, and that can- 
not be harmed? What kind of material, then, 
will ye take to shape peace and freedom withal 
— that which is enslaved or in that which is 
free? Thatwhichis free. Have ye the flesh en- 
slaved or free? We know not. Know ye not 
that it is the slave of fever, of gout, of oph- 

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thalmia, of dysentery, of tyranny, and fire, and 
steel, and everything that is mightier than it- 
self? Yea, it is enslaved. How, then, can 
aught that is of the body be free? and how 
can that be great or precious which by nature 
is dead, mere dust or clay? What then! do 
ye possess nothing that is free? Nothing per- 
haps ! But say, who can force you to assent to 
what appears to be false? No one; or to refuse 
assent to what appears to be true? No one. 
Well, then, you see by this, that there is in 
you something which is by nature free. Or, 
again, which of you can desire or avoid, pur- 
sue or shrink, purpose or prepare for anything 
without having formed a conception of what is 
profitable or unbecoming? No one. Here, 
too, then, you have something that is unim- 
peded and free; this part of you, miserable 
men, ye should cultivate, and attend to, and 
in this seek for the good. 

And how is it possible that one can live 
prosperously who hath nothing; a naked, 
homeless, hearthless, beggarly man, without 
servants, without a country ? Lo, God hath 
sent you a man to show you in very deed 

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that it is possible. Look at me ! I have neither 
country, nor house, nor goods, nor servants; 
I sleep on the ground; I have no wife nor 
children, nor garret; I possess nothing but 
earth, sky, and one poor cloak. Yet what lack 
I? Am I not free from grief and fear? Am 
I not free? When did any of you see me 
fail of my pursuit or meet with what I had 
avoided? When did I blame God or man? 
When did I accuse any man? When did any 
of you see me of a sullen countenance? How 
do I meet those whom ye fear and marvel at? 
Do I not treat them as my slaves ? Who that 
seeth me, but thinketh he beholdeth his king 
and his lord? 

13. Life a voyage. 

We must act in life as when starting on a 
voyage. What is it possible for me to do? To 
select the captain and the crew, the season 
and the day. Then perhaps a storm bursts 
upon us. Well! but what does it matter to 
me any more? because all that was mine to 
do has been already done; the problem is 
now another's, namely, the captain's. But the 

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ship is actually sinking. What have I to do 
then? 

Why, simply the only thing I can — drown 
— without terror or screaming or accusing 
God, but knowing that what is born must 
also perish. 

For I am no eternal, but a man — a frag- 
ment of the whole, just as an hour is of the 
day ; like the hour, then, I must arrive, as an 
hour pass away. What does it matter there- 
fore how I pass away, whether by drowning, 
or by a fever ? For pass I must — in this, or 
some other way. 

14. Man an actor on the world ' s stage. 

Remember that thou art an actor in a play, 
of such a kind as the manager may choose — 
with a short part, if he assigns you a short 
part, or a long one, if he shall choose a long; 
if he wishes you to act the part of a beggar, see 
that you act the part naturally; if the part of a 
cripple, of a magistrate, of a private person, see 
that you act each gracefully. For this is your 
duty, to act well the part that is given to you ; 
but to select the part, belongs to another. 

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15. How Death should find us. 

Do you not know that both disease and 
death must surprise us while we are doing 
something ? the husbandman while he is til- 
ling the ground, the sailor while he is on his 
voyage? What would you be doing when death 
surprises you, for you must be surprised while 
you are doing something? If you can be do- 
ing anything better than this when you are 
surprised, do it. For I wish to be surprised 
by disease or death when I am looking after 
nothing else than my own will, that I may 
be free from perturbation, that I may be free 
from hindrance, free from compulsion, and 
in a state of liberty. I wish to be found 
practising these things that I may be able to 
say to God : Have I in any respect trans- 
gressed thy commands ? have I in any respect 
wrongly used the powers which thou gavest 
me ? have I misused my perceptions or my 
preconceptions ? have I ever blamed thee ? 
have I ever found fault with thy adminis- 
tration ? I have been sick, because it was thy 
will, and so have others, but I was content 

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to be sick. I have been poor because it was 
thy will, but I was content also. I have not 
rilled a magisterial office, because it was not 
thy pleasure that I should ; I have never 
desired it. Hast thou ever seen me for this 
reason discontented ? have I not always ap- 
proached thee with a cheerful countenance, 
ready to do thy commands and to obey thy 
signals ? Is it now thy will that I should de- 
part from the assemblage of men ? I depart. 
I give thee all thanks that thou hast allowed 
me to join in this thy assemblage of men and 
to see thy works, and to comprehend this, thy 
administration. May death surprise me while 
I am thinking of these things, while I am 
thus writing and reading. 

1 6. Loss truly restitution. 

Never say, in any case, — I have lost so 
and so, but only, I have returned it. Is your 
child dead? it is returned. Is your wife dead? 
she is returned. Have you had your property 
taken away ? well ! is not this, too, merely 
returned ? 

But you tell me — he that took it was a 

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rogue. I answer — what does it concern you, 
through whose action he that gave it you de- 
mands it back ; so long as he allows it to you, 
manage it as you would the property of an- 
other, use it as wayfarers use an inn. 

17. Good habits , their nature and attainment. 

Every skill and faculty is maintained and 
increased by the corresponding acts ; as, the 
faculty of walking by walking, of running by 
running. If you will read aloud well, then do 
it constantly; if you will write, then write. 
But when you have not read aloud for thirty 
days together, but done something else, you 
shall see the result. Thus, if you have lain 
down for ten days, then rise up and endeavor 
to walk a good distance, and you shall see 
how your legs are enfeebled. In general, then, 
if you would make yourself skilled in any- 
thing, then do it ; and if you would refrain 
from anything, then do it not, but use yourself 
to do rather some other thing instead of it. 

And thus in spiritual things also. When 
thou art wrathful, know that not this single 
evil hath happened to thee, but that thou 

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hast increased the aptness to it, and, as it 
were, poured oil upon the fire. When thou 
art overcome in passion, think not that this 
defeat is all ; but thou hast nourished thy in- 
continence, and increased it. For it is impos- 
sible but that aptitudes and faculties should 
spring up where they were not before, or 
spread and grow mightier, by the correspond- 
ing acts. And thus, surely, do also, as the 
philosophers say, the infirmities of the soul 
grow up. For when thou hast once been 
covetous of money, if reason, which leadeth 
to a sense of the vice, be called to aid, then 
both the desire is set at rest, and our ruling 
faculty is re-established, as it was in the be- 
ginning. But if thou bring no remedy to aid, 
then shall the soul return no more to the first 
estate; but when next excited by the corre- 
sponding appearance, shall be kindled to de- 
sire even more quickly than before. And 
when this is continually happening, the soul 
becomes callous in the end, and through its 
infirmity the love of money is strengthened. 
For he that hath had a fever, when the illness 
hath left him, is not what he was before his 

214 



SELECTIONS— EPICTETUS 

fever, unless he have been entirely healed. 
And somewhat on this wise also it happens 
in the affections of the soul ; certain traces 
and scars are left in it, the which if a man 
do not wholly eradicate, when he hath been 
again scourged on the same place, it shall 
make no longer scars, but sores. 

Wouldst thou, then, be no longer of a 
wrathful temper ? Then do not nourish the 
aptness to it, give it nothing that will increase 
it, be tranquil from the outset, and number 
the days when thou hast not been wrathful. 
I have not been wrathful now for one, now 
for two, now for three days; but if thou have 
raved thirty days, then sacrifice to God. For 
the aptness is at first enfeebled, and then de- 
stroyed. To-day I was not vexed, nor to- 
morrow, nor for two or three months to- 
gether ; but I was heedful when anything 
happened to move me thus. Know that 
thou art in good care. 

But how is this to be done ? Resolve at last 
to seek thine own commendation, to appear 
fair in the eyes of God ; desire to become pure 
with thine own pure self, and with God. Then 

215 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

when thou shalt fall in with any appearance 
such as we have spoken of, what saith Plato P 
Go to the purifying sacrifices, go and pray in 
the temples of the protecting gods. It shall 
even suffice if thou seek the company of good 
and wise men, and try thyself by one of them, 
whether he be one of the living or of the dead. 
This is the genuine athlete, he who exer- 
ciseth himself against such appearances. Stand 
fast, unhappy man, and be not swept away. 
Great is the struggle, divine the enterprise ; 
it is for sovereignty, for freedom, for pros- 
perity, for peace. Think upon God : call on 
him to be your helper and defender ; even 
as a sailor calls upon the Twin Gods (Dios- 
curi) in a storm ; for what storm is greater 
than that which arises from objects strong 
enough to dash reason from her seat? Aye, 
what is a storm itself but a thing of sense P 
since you have only to take away the fear of 
death, and then you may stand as many light- 
nings and thunderings as you please, for you 
will find what a great calm and serenity there 
will be in the ruling faculty of your soul. But 
if you be once worsted, and say that you will 

216 



SELECTIONS— EPICTETUS 

conquer the next time, and then the same 
again and again, be sure you will at last be- 
come so cowardly and weak, as not even to 
perceive henceforward that you are doing 
wrong, but you will begin to frame excuses 
for your misdoing, and thus confirm the truth 
of Hesiod's words : "With ruin ever the pro- 
crastinator wrestles ! " 

1 8 . How to live. 

How long wilt thou delay to hold thyself 
worthy of the best things, and to transgress 
in nothing the decrees of reason ? Thou hast 
received the maxims by which it behooves thee 
to live ; and dost thou live by them ? What 
teacher dost thou still look for to whom to 
hand over the task of thy correction ? Thou 
art no longer a boy, but already a man full 
grown. If, then, thou art neglectful and slug- 
gish, and ever making resolve after resolve, 
and fixing one day after another on which 
thou wilt begin to attend to thyself, thou wilt 
forget that thou art making no advance, but 
will go on as one of the vulgar sort, both 
living and dying. 

217 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

Now, at last, therefore, hold thyself worthy 
to live as a man of full age and one who is 
pressing forward, and let everything that 
appeareth the best be to thee as an inviolable 
law. And if any toil or pleasure or reputation 
or the loss of it be laid upon thee, remember 
that now is the contest, here already are the 
Olympian games, and there is no deferring 
them any longer, and that in a single day and 
in a single trial, ground is to be lost or gained. 

It was thus that Socrates made himself 
what he was, in all things that befell him, 
having regard to no other things than reason. 
But thou, albeit thou be yet no Socrates, yet 
as one that would be Socrates, so it behooveth 
thee to live. 

19. Why we should bear with wrong. 

When some one may do you an injury, or 
speak ill of you, remember that he either does 
it or speaks it believing that it is right and 
meet for him to do so. It is not possible, 
then, that he can follow the thing that ap- 
pears to you, but the thing that appears to 
him. Wherefore, if it appear evil to him, it 

218 



SELECTIONS— EPICTETUS 

is he that is injured, being deceived. For also 
if any one should take a true consequence to 
be false, it is not the consequence that is in- 
jured but he which is deceived. Setting out, 
then, from these opinions, you will bear a 
gentle mind towards any man who may re- 
vile you. For, say on each occasion, so it ap- 
peared to him. 

20. 'That we should be open in our dealings. 
In doing aught which thou hast clearly dis- 
cerned a right to do, seek never to avoid be- 
ing seen in the doing of it, even though the 
multitude should be destined to form some 
wrong opinion concerning it. For if thou dost 
not right, avoid the deed itself. But if rightly, 
why fear thou who will wrongly rebuke thee ? 



219 



XIII 
SELECTIONS FROM SENECA 1 

i . The intention, not the matter, that makes the 

benefit. 

The good will of the benefactor is the foun- 
tain of all benefits; nay, it is the benefit itself, 
or, at least the stamp, that makes it valuable 
and current. Some there are, I know, that 
take the matter for the benefit; and tax the 
obligation by weight and measure. When any- 
thing is given them, they presently cast it up : 
"What may such a house be worth? such an 
office? such an estate?" as if that were the ben- 
efit, which is only the sign and mark of it : for 
the obligation rests in the mind, not in the 
matter; and all those advantages which we 
see, handle, or hold in actual possession by 
the courtesy of another, are but several modes 
or ways of explaining, and putting the good 
will in execution. There needs no great sub- 
selections from the " Morals' ' of Seneca. 

220 



SELECTIONS— SENECA 

tlety to prove that both benefits and injuries 
receive their value from the intention, when 
even brutes themselves are able to decide this 
question. . . . The benefit is immortal, the gift 
perishable : for the benefit still continues, when 
we have no longer the use or the matter of it. 

2. 'The manner of obliging. 

There is not any benefit so glorious in it- 
self, but it may yet be exceedingly sweetened, 
and improved by the manner of conferring it. 
The virtue, I know, rests in the intent; the 
profit, in the judicious application of the 
matter; but the beauty and ornament of an 
obligation lies in the manner of it; and it is 
then perfect, when the dignity of the office is 
accompanied with all the charms and delica- 
cies of humanity, good nature, and address : 
and with despatch too; for he that puts a man 
ofiffrom time to time, was never right at heart. 

3. Of a happy life^ and wherein it consists. 

There is not anything in this world, per- 
haps, that is more talked of, and less under- 
stood, than the business of a happy life. It is 

221 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

every man's wish and design; and yet not one 
of a thousand that knows wherein that happi- 
ness consists. We live, however, in a blind 
and eager pursuit of it; and the more haste 
we make in a wrong way, the farther we are 
from our journey's end. 

The true felicity of life is to be free from 
perturbations ; to understand our duties to- 
ward God and man; to enjoy the present, 
without any anxious dependence upon the 
future. Not to amuse ourselves with either 
hopes or fears, but to rest satisfied with what 
we have, which is abundantly sufficient; for 
he that is so, wants nothing. The great bless- 
ings of mankind are within us, and within our 
reach; but we shut our eyes, and like people 
in the dark, we fall foul upon the very thing we 
search for, without finding it. "Tranquillity 
is a certain quality of mind, which no condi- 
tion of fortune can either exalt or depress." 
Nothing can make it less; for it is the state 
of human perfection: it raises us as high as 
we can go, and makes every man his own sup- 
porter; whereas he that is borne up by any- 
thing else, may fall. He that judges aright, 

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SELECTIONS— SENECA 

and perseveres in it, enjoys a perpetual calm: 
he takes a true prospect of things ; he observes 
an order, measure, a decorum in all his actions : 
he has a benevolence in his nature ; he squares 
his life according to reason ; he draws to him- 
self love and admiration. 

4. There can be no happiness without virtue. 

Virtue is that perfect good, which is the 
compliment of a happy life ; the only im- 
mortal thing that belongs to mortality : it is 
the knowledge both of others and itself; it is 
an invincible greatness of mind, not to be 
elevated or dejected, with good or ill fortune. 
It is sociable and gentle ; free, steady, and 
fearless; content within itself; full of inex- 
haustible delights ; and it is valued for itself. 
One may be a good physician, a good gov- 
ernor, a good grammarian, without being a 
good man ; so that all things from without, 
are only accessories ; for the seat of it is a 
pure and holy mind. 

5. Philosophy is the guide of life. 

If it be true, that the understanding and 

223 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

the will are the two eminent faculties of the 
reasonable soul, it follows necessarily, that 
wisdom and virtue (which are the best im- 
provement of these two faculties), must be 
the perfection also of our reasonable being ; 
and consequently the undeniable foundation 
of a happy life. There is not any duty to 
which providence has not annexed a blessing ; 
nor any institution of heaven which, even in 
this life, we may not be the better for; not 
any temptation, either of fortune or of appe- 
tite, that is not subject to our reason ; nor 
any passion or affliction for which virtue has 
not provided a remedy. So that it is our own 
fault if we either fear or hope for anything ; 
which two affections are the root of all our 
miseries. From this general prospect of the 
foundation of our tranquillity, we shall pass 
by degrees to a particular consideration of 
the means by which it may be acquired ; and 
of the impediments that obstruct it ; begin- 
ning with that philosophy which principally 
regards our manners, and instructs us in the 
measures of a virtuous and quiet life. 



224 



SELECTIONS— SENECA 

6. No felicity like peace of conscience. 

" A good conscience is the testimony of a 
good life, and the reward of it." This is it 
that fortifies the mind against fortune, when 
a man has gotten the mastery of his passions ; 
placed his treasure and his security within 
himself; learned to be content with his con- 
dition ; and that death is no evil in itself, but 
only the end of man. He that has dedicated 
his mind to virtue, and to the good of human 
society, whereof he is a member, has con- 
summated all that is either profitable or nec- 
essary for him to know or do toward the 
establishment of his peace. Every man has 
a judge and witness within himself, of all the 
good and ill that he does ; which inspires us 
with great thoughts, and administers to us 
wholesome counsels. We have a veneration 
for all the works of nature, the heads of 
rivers, and the springs of medicinal waters ; 
the horrors of groves, and of caves, strike 
us with an impression of religion and worship. 
To see a man fearless in dangers, untainted 
with lusts, happy in adversity, composed in a 

225 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

tumult, and laughing at all those things which 
are generally either coveted or feared ; all 
men must acknowledge, that this can be noth- 
ing else but a beam of divinity that influences 
a mortal body. 

7. Hope and fear are the bane of human life. 

No man can be said to be perfectly happy, 
that runs the risk of disappointment ; which 
is the case of every man that fears or hopes 
for anything. For hope and fear, how distant 
forever they may seem to be the one from 
the other, they are both of them yet coupled 
in the same chain, as the guard and the pris- 
oner ; and the one treads upon the heel of 
the other. The reason of this is obvious, for 
they are passions that look forward, and are 
ever solicitous for the future ; only hope is 
the more plausible weakness of the two, which 
in truth, upon the main, are inseparable, for 
the one cannot be without the other : but 
when the hope is stronger than the fear, or 
the fear than the hope, we call it the one or 
the other; for without fear it were no longer 
hope, but certainty ; as without hope it were 

226 



SELECTIONS— SENECA 

no longer fear, but despair. We may come to 
understand, whether our disputes are vain or 
no, if we do but consider, that we are either 
troubled about the present, the future, or 
both. If the present, it is easy to judge, and 
the future is uncertain. It is a foolish thing 
to be miserable beforehand, for fear of misery 
to come ; for a man loses the present which 
he might enjoy, in expectation of the future ; 
nay, the fear of losing anything is as bad as 
the loss itself. I will be as prudent as I can, 
but not timorous or careless ; and I will be- 
think myself, and forecast what inconven- 
iences may happen, before they come. It is 
true, a man may fear, and yet not be fearful ; 
which is no more than to have the affection 
of fear, without the vice of it ; but yet a fre- 
quent admittance of it runs into a habit. It is 
a shameful and an unmanly thing to be doubt- 
ful, timorous, and uncertain ; to set one step 
forward, and another backward; and to be ir- 
resolute. Can there be any man so fearful, that 
had not rather fall once, than hang always in 
suspense ? 



227 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

8. The blessings of temperance and moderation. 

There is not anything that is necessary to 
us but we have it either cheap or gratis ; and 
this is the provision that our Heavenly 
Father has made for us, whose bounty was 
never wanting to our needs. It is true, the 
stomach craves and calls upon us, but then a 
small matter contents it ; a little bread and 
water is sufficient, and all the rest is but su- 
perfluous. He that lives according to reason 
shall never be poor, and he that governs his 
life by opinion shall never be rich ; for nature 
is limited, but fancy is boundless. As for 
meat, clothes, and lodging, a little needs the 
body, and as little covers it ; so that if man- 
kind would only attend human nature, with- 
out gaping at superfluities, a cook would be 
found as needless as a soldier ; for we may 
have necessaries on very easy terms ; where- 
as we put ourselves to great pains for ex- 
cesses. . . . 

It is the mind that makes us rich and 
happy, in what condition soever we are ; and 
money signifies no more to it than it does to 

228 



SELECTIONS — SENECA 

the gods; if the religion be sincere, no matter 
for the ornaments ; it is only luxury and 
avarice that makes poverty grievous to us ; 
for it is a very small matter that does our 
business ; and when we have provided against 
cold, hunger, and thirst, all the rest is but 
vanity and excess ; and there is no need of 
expense upon foreign delicacies, or the arti- 
fices of the kitchen. . . . 

Happy is that man that eats only for hun- 
ger, and drinks only for thirst ; that stands 
upon his own legs, and lives by reason, not 
by example ; and provides for use and neces- 
sity, not for ostentation and pomp. Let us 
curb our appetites, encourage virtue, and 
rather be beholden to ourselves for riches 
than to fortune, who when a man draws him- 
self into a narrow compass, has the least mark 
at him. Let my bed be plain and clean, and 
my clothes so too ; my meat without much 
expense, or many waiters, and neither a bur- 
den to my purse nor to my body, not to go 
out the same way it came in. That which is 
too little for luxury, is abundantly enough 
for nature, 

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GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

9. What makes life worth living. 

Why should one take pleasure in being 
alive ? merely to act as a sort of filter for so 
much food and drink ? merely to pamper and 
doctor for all one's life a sickly and wasting 
body, which is only kept from death by re- 
peated nourishment ? 

Or to abide in fear of death, the one event 
we are born for ? No ! Take away the price- 
less blessing of thought, and life is not worth 
the sweat and fever it entails. Oh ! what an 
abject thing is man, if he does not rise above 
the level of human things ! Is it a very great 
matter to contend against our passions, and 
even when we conquer these, have we done 
such wonders after all P . . . The virtue we 
aspire to is grand in its way, not, however, 
because emancipation from evil is by itself 
such a blessed thing, but because virtue ex- 
pands the mind, fits it for the knowledge of 
heavenly things, and renders it worthy of 
communion with the gods. Man only then 
attains the fullness and perfection of his des- 
tiny, when having trodden all evil under his 

230 



SELECTIONS— SENECA 

feet he lifts his mind above, and penetrates 
into the inner heart of nature. . . . 

Then at last he learns, what he has long 
sought to know. Then he begins to appre- 
hend God ; for what is God but the mind of 
the universe ? What is God but the sum of 
all that is visible and invisible. Then only do 
we ascribe to him the absolute perfection that 
is his due, when we acknowledge him to con- 
stitute all things by himself, and his opera- 
tion to extend over all without and within. 
What difference then is there between God's 
nature and our own ? Simply this : while with 
us the mind is the nobler part, he is nothing 
but mind ; he is all reason. 

10. Consolations against death. 

This life is only a prelude to eternity, 
where we are to expect another original, and 
another state of things ; we have no prospect 
of heaven here but at a distance ; let us there- 
fore expect our last and decretory hour with 
courage. The last (I say) to our bodies, but 
not to our minds ; our luggage we must leave 
behind us, and return as naked out of the 

231 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

world as we came into it. The day which we 
fear as our last, is but the birthday of our 
eternity ; and it is the only way to it. So that 
what we fear as a rock, proves to be but a 
port ; in many cases to be desired, never to 
be refused ; and he that dies young, has only 
made a quick voyage of it. Some are be- 
calmed, others cut it away before wind ; and 
we live just as we sail : first, we run our child- 
hood out of sight ; our youth next ; and then 
our middle age ; after that follows old age, 
and brings us to the common end of man- 
kind. It is a great providence that we have 
more ways out of the world than we have 
into it. Our security stands on a point, the 
very article of death. It draws a great many 
blessings into a very narrow compass ; and 
although the fruit of it does not seem to ex- 
tend to the deceased, yet the difficulty of it 
is more than balanced by the contemplation 
of the future. Nay, suppose that all the busi- 
ness of this world should be forgotten, or my 
memory traduced, what is all this to me ? " I 
have done my duty." Undoubtedly that 
which puts an end to all other evils cannot be 

232 



SELECTIONS — SENECA 

a very great evil itself, and yet it is no easy 
thing for flesh and blood to despise life. . . . 

To suffer death is but the law of nature ; 
and it is a great comfort that it can be done 
but once ; in the very convulsions of it we 
have this consolation, that our pain is near an 
end, and that it frees us from all the miseries 
of life. What it is we know not, and it were 
rash to condemn what we do not understand ; 
but this we presume, either that we shall pass 
out of this into a better life, where we shall 
live with tranquillity and splendor in divine 
mansions, or else return to our first princi- 
ples, free from the sense of any inconvenience. 
There is nothing immortal, nor many things 
lasting ; but by divers ways everything comes 
to an end. What an arrogance it is then, when 
the world itself stands condemned to a disso- 
lution, that man alone should expect to live 
forever? It is unjust not to allow unto the 
giver the power of disposing of his own 
bounty, and a folly, only to value the pres- 
ent. 

Death is as much a debt as money, and 
life is but a journey towards it: some despatch 

2 33 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

it sooner, others later, but we must all have 
the same period. The thunderbolt is un- 
doubtedly just, that draws even from those 
that are struck with it a veneration. A great 
soul takes no delight in staying with the 
body, it considers whence it came, and knows 
whither it is to go. The day will come that 
shall separate this mixture of soul and body, 
of divine and human ; my body I will leave 
where I found it, my soul I will restore to 
heaven, which would have been there already, 
but for the clog that keeps it down : and be- 
side, how many men have been the worse 
for longer living, that might have died with 
reputation, if they had been sooner taken 
away? How many disappointments of hope- 
ful youths, that have proved dissolute men ? 
Over and above the ruins, shipwrecks, tor- 
ments, prisons, that attend long life ; a blessing 
so deceitful, that if a child were in condition 
to judge of it, and at liberty to refuse it, he 
would not take it. 

1 1 . Poverty a blessing. 
No man shall ever be poor, that goes to 

234 



SELECTIONS— SENECA 

himself for what he wants ; and that is the 
readiest way to riches: nature indeed will have 
her due, but yet whatsoever is beyond neces- 
sity, is precarious, and not necessary. It is not 
her business to gratify the palate, but to satisfy 
a craving stomach: bread, when a man is hun- 
gry, does his work, let it be never so coarse ; 
and water when he is adry; let his thirst be 
quenched, and nature is satisfied; no matter 
whence it comes, or whether he drinks in gold, 
silver, or in the hollow of his hand. To prom- 
ise a man riches, and to teach him poverty, is 
to deceive him : but shall I call him poor, that 
wants nothing; though he may be beholden 
for it to his patience, rather than to his for- 
tune? Or shall any man deny him to be 
rich, whose riches can never be taken away? 
Whether it is better to have much or enough? 
He that has much desires more, which shows 
that he has not yet enough; but he that has 
enough is at rest. 

12. Of Anger. 

We have here to encounter the most dan- 
gerous, outrageous, brutal and intractable of 

235 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

all passions; the most loathsome and un- 
mannerly ; nay, the most ridiculous too ; and 
the subduing of this monster will do a great 
deal toward the establishment of human 
peace. . . . 

Anger is not only a vice, but a vice point- 
blank against nature ; for it divides, instead of 
joining; and in some measure frustrates the 
end of providence in human society. One 
man was born to help another; anger makes 
us destroy one another; the one unites, the 
other separates ; the one is beneficial to us, 
the other mischievous ; the one succors even 
strangers, the other destroys the most inti- 
mate friends ; the one ventures all to save an- 
other, the other ruins himself to undo another. 
Nature is bountiful, but anger is pernicious; 
for it is not fear, but mutual love, that binds 
up mankind. 

13. Consolation in exile. 

Man's best gifts lie beyond the power of 
man either to give or to take away. This uni- 
verse, the grandest and loveliest work of na- 
ture, and the intellect which was created to 

236 



SELECTIONS— SENECA 

observe and to admire it, are our special and 
eternal possessions, which shall last as long 
as we last ourselves. Cheerful, therefore, and 
erect, let us hasten with undaunted footsteps 
whithersoever our fortunes lead us. 

There is no land where man cannot dwell, 
— no land where he cannot uplift his eyes to 
heaven. Wherever we are, the distance of the 
divine from the human remains the same. 
So then, so long as my eyes are not robbed 
of that spectacle with which they cannot be 
satiated, so long I may look upon the sun 
and moon, and fix my lingering gaze on the 
other constellations, and consider their rising 
and setting and the spaces between them and 
the causes of their less and greater speed, — 
while I may contemplate the multitude of 
stars glittering throughout the heaven, some 
stationary, some revolving, some suddenly 
blazing forth, others dazzling the gaze with 
a flood of fire as though they fell, and others 
leaving over a long space their trails of light ; 
while I am in the midst of such phenomena, 
and mingle myself, as far as a man may, with 
things celestial, — while my soul is ever oc- 

237 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

cupied in contemplations so sublime as these, 
what matters it what ground I tread ? 

What though fortune has thrown me where 
the most magnificent abode is but a cottage ? 
The humblest cottage, if it be but the home 
of virtue, may be more beautiful than all 
temples ; no place is narrow which can con- 
tain the crowd of glorious virtues; no exile 
severe into which you may go with such a 

reliance. 

14. Profitable reading. 

Take care lest your habit of reading many 
authors and all sorts of books, involve giddi- 
ness and inconstancy of mind. If you would 
extract anything that may settle permanently 
in your memory, you must dwell and feed 
upon a few choice and definite spirits. He is 
nowhere that is everywhere. Those who pass 
their life in travel find many inns, but form no 
friendships ; and it is necessarily the same with 
those who devote themselves closely to no one 
work of genius, but hastily skim every book 
they come across. That meat can never benefit, 
nor be assimilated with, the body, which is no 
sooner taken in than it is passed out. . . . 

238 



SELECTIONS— SENECA 

" But [you tell me] 1 like to turn over now 
this work and now that." Ah ! it is only a 
dainty stomach that is fond of tasting numer- 
ous and diverse dishes, which disorder and do 
not nourish it. Therefore I say, always read 
well approved authors ; and if at any time you 
turn for amusement to others, still always 
come back to the former. 

Procure every day from them some help 
against poverty, death, and other plagues of 
humanity ; and after running through several 
such passages, pick out some one that you 
may on that day inwardly digest. 

This I always do myself; out of the many 
things I read, I select a particular one to appre- 
ciate. 

15. The discipline of God, 

Those whom God approves and loves, he 
examines, tries, and hardens; such as he ap- 
pears to favor and to spare, only become ef- 
feminate, and are reserved by him for evil to 
come. 

For it is a mistake to suppose that any one 
is exempt from ills; however long his pros- 
perity may have lasted, his share will come at 

2 39 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

length. It may seem to have been remitted ; it 
is but deferred. Why does God visit the best 
of men with ill health, or affliction, or troubles 
of other kinds? On the same principle that 
in war the bravest soldiers have the hazard- 
ous enterprises entrusted to them, and it is 
the picked men whom the general sends to a 
night attack, to reconnoitre a road, or storm a 
fortress. In their case no one thinks of saying, 
" My general has dealt hardly with me," but 
rather, "He must have thought highly of 
me"; such should be the language of those 
who are called to suffer what none but cow- 
ards and weaklings grieve at. It just comes to 
this, that God has deemed us worthy subjects 
whereon to try how much human nature could 
bear. 

1 6. The presence of God in man. 

We need not lift our hands to heaven, nor 
beseech the sacristan for permission to ap- 
proach the idol's ear, as though we should 
be heard the better for that. 

No! God is near you, with you, in you. 

There dwells within us (believe me) a holy 
spirit, the watcher and guardian of all we do, 

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SELECTIONS— SENECA 

good or bad. According as we deal with him 
so he deals with us. No one is virtuous with- 
out God's influence, and no one without his 
aid can rise superior to fortune : he it is from 
whom all high and noble counsels proceed. 

17. The eye of God. 

So must we live as under the eye of One; 
so must we think as though One could look 
into our inmost heart. For what is the good 
of hiding anything from man, when from 
God no secrets are hid? He is present to 
our minds; he enters into the very core of 
our thoughts. 

So should we live with our fellow men as 
in the sight of God; so should we speak to 
God, as within the hearing of man. 

18. What is God? 

What is God? The mind of the universe. 
What is he? All that you see, and all that 
you do not see. 

Guide and guardian of the universe; soul 
and spirit of the world ; builder and master of 
so great a work — to him all names belong. 

241 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

Would you call him Destiny? You will not 

err: cause of causes, on him all depends. Had 

you rather say Providence? This will be right : 

by his plan the world is watched over, so that 

it goes safely through its motions. Or Nature? 

This title does him no wrong: of him are all 

things born, and in him we live. Or Universe? 

You are not mistaken: he is all that we see, 

wholly present in every part, and sustaining all 

things. 

19. The worship of God. 

Worship will never be satisfactory till a 
right conception has been formed of God as 
possessing all things, and bestowing all things 
freely in love. To believe in the gods is the 
first step in worship, the next is to ascribe to 
them their proper majesty, and, what is essen- 
tial to majesty, the attribute of goodness; and 
then to feel that it is the gods who govern 
the world, who guide all things by their power, 
who exercise guardianship over the human 
race while not neglecting the individual. 
They neither inflict, nor are susceptible of, 
harm ; though offenders they correct, coerce, 
condemn, and sometimes visit with punish- 

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SELECTIONS— SENECA 

ment in the form of blessing. If you would 
win the divine favor, you have only to be 
virtuous ; the truest worship of the gods is to 
imitate them. 

20. Prayer as evidence of divine providence, 

I know that it is contended that God be- 
stows no blessings on us at all, but is indif- 
ferent and regardless, not deigning to look 
upon the world, either busied about other 
matter, or (what Epicurus thought to be the 
height of bliss) doing nothing at all, and un- 
affected alike by benefits or injuries. The 
man who maintains this can never have heard 
the accents of prayers nor the vows every- 
where made with uplifted hands to heaven as 
well in private as in public. Surely this would 
never be done, and the whole of mankind 
could never have joined in such madness as 
to implore deaf gods who had no power to 
help, but that they were sure that the gods 
bestow benefits, sometimes of their own proper 
motion, at other times in answer to prayer, 
and that such benefits are large, reasonable, 
and efficacious in freeing them from great 

2 43 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

and impending danger. Is there a single be- 
ing so wretched, so despised, so born to a hard 
and penal destiny as not to have experienced 
at one time or another this liberality of the 
gods? 



244 



XIV 

SELECTIONS FROM MARCUS 
AURELIUS 1 

i. Charity for everybody. 

When you wake, say to yourself — to-day 
I shall encounter meddling, ingratitude, vio- 
lence, cunning, malice, self-seeking ; all of 
them the results of men not knowing what 
is good and what is evil. But as for me who 
have understood the nature of the good, that 
it is beautiful, and of the evil, that it is ugly, 
and also the nature of the offender himself, 
that he is related to me not by community of 
flesh and blood, but in the same mind and 
partnership with the divine, I cannot be in- 
jured by any of them ; for no one can force 
me into what is disgraceful, nor can I hate, or 
be angry with, one who is related to me. For 
we are made for co-operation, like feet, like 

1 Selections from the " Meditations " of Marcus Aure- 
lius. 

245 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper 
and lower teeth. 

To act against one another then is con- 
trary to nature ; and it is acting against one 
another to show resentment or aversion. 

2. The ordering of providence. 

All that is from the gods is full of provi- 
dence. That which is from fortune is not 
separated from nature or without an inter- 
weaving and involution with the things which 
are ordered by providence. From thence all 
things flow ; and there is besides necessity, 
and that which is for the advantage of the 
whole universe, of which you are a part. To 
every part of nature that which nature brings, 
and which helps towards its conservation, is 
good. The conservation of the world-order 
depends not only on the changes of the ele- 
ments, but also on those of the compounded 
wholes. Be content with what you have, find 
there your principles of life. But cast away 
the thirst after books, that you may not die 
murmuring, but cheerfully, truly, and from 
the heart thankful to the gods. 

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SELECTIONS — MARCUS AURELIUS 

Think how long you have gone on post- 
poning, how often the gods have granted 
days of grace, which you have failed to use. 
It is high time to give heed to the order of 
which you are a part, and to the great dis- 
poser, of whom your being is an effluence, and 
to note that a limit of time is fixed for you, 
which if you do not use for clearing away the 
clouds from your mind, it will go and you 
will go, and you will never return. 

3. The right way of living. 

Do not waste the remainder of life in re- 
garding other men, except when bent upon 
some unselfish gain. For you lose the oppor- 
tunity of doing something else when you have 
such thoughts as these : what is such a person 
doing, and why, and what is he saying, and 
what is he thinking of, and what is he con- 
triving, and whatever else of the kind makes 
us wander away from the observation of our 
own ruling power. We ought then to check 
in the series of our thoughts everything that 
is without a purpose and useless, and above 
all, meddling and ill nature ; and a man 

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GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

should use himself to think of those things 
only about which if one should suddenly ask, 
"What is in your thoughts now? " with per- 
fect truth you might immediately answer, that 
all your thoughts were simple and in charity, 
such as befit a social being, who eschews vo- 
luptuous or even self-indulgent fancies, or 
jealousy of any kind, or malice and suspicion, 
or any other mood which one would blush 
to own. A man so minded, and committed 
finally to the pursuit of virtue, is indeed a 
priest and minister of gods, true to that in- 
ward and implanted power, which keeps a 
man unsoiled by pleasure, invulnerable by 
pain, free from all touch of arrogance, inno- 
cent of all baseness, a combatant in the great- 
est of all combats, which is the mastery of 
passion, steeped in justice to the core, and 
with his whole heart welcoming all that be- 
falls him as his portion ; seldom, and only in 
view of some large unselfish gain, does he 
regard what other men say or do or think. In 
action his own conduct is his sole concern, 
and he realizes without fail the web of his own 
destiny ; action he makes high, convinced 

248 



SELECTIONS — MARCUS AURELIUS 

that destiny is good; for his apportioned des- 
tiny sweeps man on with the vaster sweep of 
things. 

And he remembers also that every rational 
creature is his kinsman, and that to care for 
all men is according to man's nature ; and a 
man should hold on to the opinion not of all, 
but of those only who confessedly live accord- 
ing to nature. But as to those who live not 
so, he always bears in mind what kind of 
men they are both at home and from home ; 
both by night and by day, and what they are, 
and with what men they live an impure life. 
Accordingly he does not value at all the 
praise which comes from such men, since they 
are not even satisfied with themselves. 

4. The blessings of retirement. 

Men seek retreats for themselves, houses 
in the country, sea-shores, and mountains ; 
and you, too, know full well what that yearn- 
ing means. But this is altogether a mark of 
the most common sort of men, for it is in 
your power, whenever you choose, to retire 
into yourself. For nowhere either with more 

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GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

quiet or more freedom from trouble does a 
man retire than into his own soul, particularly 
when he has within him such thoughts that 
by looking into them he is immediately in 
perfect tranquillity ; and I affirm that tran- 
quillity is nothing else than the good order- 
ing of the mind. Ever and anon grant yourself 
this retirement; and so renew yourself. Have 
a few principles brief and elemental, recur- 
rence to which will suffice to shut out the 
court and all its ways, and anon send you 
back unchafing to the tasks to which you 
must return. 

With what are you discontented ? With 
the badness of men ? Recall to your mind 
this conclusion, that rational creatures exist 
for one another, and that to endure is a part 
of justice, and that men do wrong involun- 
tarily ; and consider how many already, after 
mutual enmity, suspicion, hatred, and fighting, 
have been stretched dead, reduced to ashes; 
and be quiet at last. — Or is it the portion 
assigned you in the universe, with which you 
are dissatisfied ? Recall to mind the alterna- 
tive — either a foreseeing providence, or blind 

250 



SELECTIONS — MARCUS AURELIUS 

atoms — and all the abounding proofs that 
the world is as it were a city. Or is it bodily 
troubles that assail ? Consider then further 
that the mind mingles not with the breath, 
whether moving gently or violently, when it 
has once drawn itself apart and discovered its 
own power. Or does some bubble of fame 
torment you ? Then fix your gaze on swift 
oblivion, on the gulf of infinity this way and 
that, on the empty rattle of plaudits and the 
indiscriminating fickleness of professed ap- 
plause, on the narrow range within which you 
are circumscribed. For the whole earth is a 
point, and how small a nook in it is this your 
dwelling, and how few are there in it, and 
what kind of people are they who will praise 
you. 

This then remains. Remember to retire 
into this territory of your own. Above all do 
not strain or strive, but be free, and look at 
things as a man, as a human being, as a 
citizen, as a mortal. But among the things 
readiest to your hand to which you shall turn, 
let there be these, which are two — first, things 
cannot touch the soul, but stand without it 

251 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

stationary ; tumult can arise only from views 
within ourselves : secondly, all things you see, 
in a moment change and will be no more ; 
ay, think of all the changes in which you have 
yourself borne part. The world is a process 
of variation ; life a process of views. 

5. The universe as a living organism. 

Constantly regard the universe as a living 
organism, having one substance and one soul ; 
and observe how all things have reference to 
one perception, the perception of this one 
living being ; and how all things act with one 
movement ; and all cooperate towards all that 
come to pass ; observe too the continuous 
spinning of the thread and the contexture of 
the web. 

Thou art a little soul bearing about* a 
corpse, as Epictetus said. 

It is no evil for things to undergo change, 
and no good for things to subsist in conse- 
quence of change. 

Time is like a river made up of the events 
which happen, and a violent stream; for as 
soon as a thing has been seen, it is carried 

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SELECTIONS — MARCUS AURELIUS 

away, and another comes in its place, and this 
will be carried away too. 

All that happens is as accustomed and fa- 
miliar as spring rose, or summer fruit; so it 
is with disease, death, slander, intrigue, and 
all else that joys or vexes fools. 

6. The wrongfulness of sloth. 

In the morning when you feel loth to rise, 
let this thought be present to you : I am get- 
ting up to perform the duty of a man ; why 
then am I out of humor, if I am going to 
do the very things for which I was born, and 
have been brought into the world ? Or, was I 
made only for this, that I might lie abed and 
keep warm beneath the sheets? But (do you 
say?) this is more comfortable. Were you 
then born only to be comfortable, and not 
rather for action and exertion? Do you not 
observe how the plants and birds, the ants 
and spiders and the bees contribute to im- 
prove their several departments of the uni- 
verse ; and yet do you refuse to perform the 
duties of a human being, slow to act accord- 
ing to your nature ? But, say you, one requires 

253 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

rest as well as work. True ! but then Nature 
has assigned limits to this also, just as she has 
done in regard to eating and drinking; and 
yet you go beyond these limits, beyond what 
is sufficient. In your action, on the contrary, 
it is not so, but you stop short of what you 
could do ; for you have no true love for your- 
self; else you would love both your own 
nature and that nature's purpose. 

Why! those, for instance, who love their 
trade will wear themselves out at work, re- 
gardless of washing and food ; and yet you 
honor your own nature less than the turner 
his art of turning, or the dancer his skill in 
dancing, less than the miser his coin, or the 
vainglorious man his pretty praise. Such per- 
sons, moreover, when passionately inclined to 
anything, care neither for food nor sleep, com- 
pared with advancing what they are set upon; 
and yet do you regard social actions as of less 
value, or deserving of less devotion. 

7. Man made for cooperation. 

One and all we work towards one consum- 
mation, some knowingly and intelligently, 

254 



SELECTIONS — MARCUS AURELIUS 

others unconsciously. Just as Heraclitus, was 
it not, said of those who sleep, that they too 
are at work, fellow-workers in the conduct of 
the universe. But men work together in dif- 
ferent ways; nay, even the man who com- 
plains and endeavors to resist and subvert 
the course of things, does a full share of co- 
operation; for the universe had need of even 
such persons as these. Consider, therefore, 
among whom you range yourself; for you 
may be sure that he who governs all things 
will make some good use of you, and welcome 
you into the ranks of those who are engaged 
in, or disposed to, cooperative service. 

8. Man s true interest. 

If the gods took counsel about me and 
what ought to befall me, doubtless they coun- 
selled well ; a god of ill counsel one can scarce 
imagine. And what should impel them to seek 
my hurt? What advantage were it either to 
them or to the universe, which is the first ob- 
ject of their providence? But if the gods have 
not decreed anything about me individually, 
they have at all events certainly decreed about 

255 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

the general course of things; and whatever 
happens by way of consequence therefrom, I 
am bound to welcome and be content with. 
But if perchance they make no decree about 
anything, — a wicked belief to entertain, for 
then we must give up sacrifices and prayers, 
and adjurations, and everything else we do on 
the faith of the gods being present and living 
with us, — if, I say, they make no decree 
about what concerns us, I am free in that 
case to provide for myself, and it belongs to 
me to consider what is for my interest. But 
the true interest of every man is that which is 
conformable to his constitution and nature ; 
and my nature is rational and social. My city 
and country, so far as I am Antoninus, is 
Rome ; so far as I am a human being, it is the 
world. 

These are the societies, whose advantage 
can alone be good for me. 

9. Life a mimic -pageant. 

What is evil ? It is what you have seen 
again and again. And on the occasion of 
everything which happens keep this in mind, 

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SELECTIONS — MARCUS AURELIUS 

that it is that which you have often seen. 
Everywhere, up and down, you will find the 
same things, with which the old histories are 
filled, those mediaeval are those of our own 
day ; repeating themselves every day in our 
own cities and homes. There is nothing new ; 
all is stale and fleeting. 

How can our principles become dead, un- 
less the impressions which correspond to them 
are extinguished ? But it is your power con- 
tinuously to fan these thoughts into a flame. 
I can have that opinion about anything, which 
I ought to have. If I can, why am I dis- 
turbed ? The things which are external to my 
mind have no relation at all to my mind. — 
Grasp that, and you stand upright ; you can 
ever renew your life. See things once more 
as you saw them before ; and therein you have 
new life. 

A mimic pageant, plays on the stage, flocks 
of sheep, exercises with spears, a bone cast to 
dogs, a crumb dropped in the fish-tanks, la- 
boring of ants and burden-carrying, the scam- 
per of scurrying mice, puppets pulled by 
strings — such is life. In such surroundings 

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GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

you must take your stand, considerate and un- 

disdainful ; yet understand the while, that the 

measure of the man's worth is the worth of his 

aims. 

10. Self introspection. 

A scowl upon the face is a violation of na- 
ture ; when it is often assumed, the result is 
that all comeliness dies away, and at last is so 
completely extinguished that it is past all re- 
kindling. Try to conclude from this very fact 
that it is contrary to reason; if once sensibility 
to sin is lost, what object in still living on ? 

Nature which governs the whole will soon 
change all things which you see, and out of 
their substance will make other things, and 
again other things from the substance of them, 
in order that the world may be ever new. 

When any one does you a wrong, set your- 
self at once to consider, what was the point 
of view, good or bad, that led him wrong. 
As soon as you perceive it, you will be sorry 
for him, not surprised or angry. For your 
own view of good is either the same as his, or 
something like in kind ; and you will make 
allowance. Or supposing your own view of 

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SELECTIONS — MARCUS AURELIUS 

good and bad has altered, you will find charity 
for his mistakes come easier. 

1 1 . The pursuit of happiness. 

One good corrective to vainglory is to re- 
member that you cannot claim to have lived 
your entire life, nor even from youth up, as 
a philosopher. But both to many others and 
to yourself it is plain that you are far from 
philosophy. You have fallen into disorder 
then, so that it is no longer easy for you to 
get the reputation of a philosopher; and your 
plan of life also opposes it. Now that your 
eyes are really open to what the facts are, 
never mind what others think of you ; be 
self-content, if only for life's remainder, just 
so long as nature wills you to live on. You 
have but to apprehend that will, and let noth- 
ing else distract you ; you have tried much, 
and in misguided ways, and nowhere have 
you found the unhappy life ; not in systems, 
nor wealth, nor fame, nor self-indulgence, no- 
where. Where then is happiness ? In doing 
that which man's nature craves. How do it ? 
By holding principles from which come en- 

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GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

deavors and actions. What principles ? Prin- 
ciples touching good and bad — to wit, that 
nothing is good for a man, which does not 
make him just, temperate, brave, free ; noth- 
ing evil, that does not produce opposite 
results. 

On the occasion of every act ask yourself: 
How is this with respect to me ? Shall I re- 
pent of it ? A little time and I am dead, and 
all is gone. What more do I seek, if what I 
am now doing is the work of an intelligent 
human being, and a social being, and one who 
is under the same law with God P 

12. The object of life. 

In every action try to make life a whole: if 
each, so far as it can, contributes its part, be 
satisfied; and that, no man can hinder. — 
"Some outer obstacle," you say, "will inter- 
fere." — "Nay, but nothing can touch the jus- 
tice, wisdom, reasonableness of the intention." 
— "But may not some form of action be pre- 
vented ? " — " Possibly ; but by welcoming that 
prevention, and with a good grace adopting 
the alternative, you at once substitute a course 

260 



SELECTIONS — MARCUS AURELIUS 

that will fit into its place in the whole we have 
in view." 

Modestly take, cheerfully resign. 

13. The present to be lived for ', not the past. 

Do not disturb yourself by thinking of the 
whole of your life. Let not your thoughts at 
once embrace all the various troubles which 
you may expect to befall you; but as each 
trouble comes, say to yourself, what is there 
here too hard to bear or to endure? and you 
will be ashamed to confess. And yet again 
remember, that you have not to bear up 
against the future or the past, but always 
against the present only. But this is reduced 
to a very little, when you strictly circumscribe 
it to itself, and repudiate moral inability to 
hold out merely against that. 

14. Death should be welcomed. 

Do not despise death, but accept it cheer- 
fully, as being one of those events which 
nature wills. As youth and age, as growth 
and prime, as the coming of teeth and beard 
and gray hairs, as begetting and pregnancy 

261 



GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

and bearing of children, as all other operations 
of nature, which come with the seasons of your 
life, such also is the process of dissolution. A 
thoughtful man therefore will not regard death 
in a careless, impatient and contemptuous 
spirit, but will wait for it as one of the opera- 
tions of nature. Just as you wait now for the 
time when the embryo shall issue from the 
womb of your wife, so should you be expect- 
ing the hour when your soul shall drop out of 
its shell. But if you want, besides, a common- 
place consideration to touch and console your 
heart, you will be most favorably disposed 
towards death, if you reflect on the objects 
you are about to part with, and the characters 
with which your soul will cease to converse. 
Far be it to take offence at them ; nay, rather, 
care for them and deal gently with them; 
yet remember, that you are parting with men 
whose principles are not your principles. The 
one thing, if any, which could hold you back 
and chain you still to life, would be com- 
panionship of kindred spirits. As it is, how- 
ever, you see what great trouble arises from 
the want of harmony in those who live to- 

262 



SELECTIONS — MARCUS AURELIUS 

gether, enough to make one cry, "Come 
quickly, O Death, for fear I too forget my- 
self!" 

15. The inner self. 

Hasten (to examine) your own inner self 
and that of the universe and that of your 
neighbor; your own that you may make it 
just; and that of the universe, that you may 
remember of what you are a part; and that 
of your neighbor, that you may know whether 
he has acted ignorantly or with knowledge, 
and that you may also take into account the 
bond of brotherhood. 

As you yourself are a component part of 
a social system, so let every act of yours be a 
component part of social life. Any action of 
yours that does not tend, directly or remotely, 
to this social end, dislocates life and infringes 
its unity. It is of the nature of a mutiny, just 
as when in a popular assembly, a man acting 
by himself stands apart from the general 
agreement. 

16. Impulses and actions should govern. 

Let there be freedom from perturbations 

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GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

with respect to the things which come from 
external cause ; and let there be justice in the 
things done by virtue of the internal cause ; 
in other words, let impulse and act make 
social action their one end, and so fulfil the 
law of nature. 

The agitations that beset you are superflu- 
ous, and depend wholly upon judgments of 
your own. You can rid yourself of them, and 
in so doing will indeed live at large, by em- 
bracing the whole universe in your view and 
comprehending all eternity and imagining the 
swiftness of change in each particular, seeing 
how short is the time from birth to dissolu- 
tion, and the illimitable time before birth as 
well as the equally boundless time after dis- 
solution. 

All that you see will quickly perish, and 
those who have been spectators of its dissolu- 
tion will very soon perish too. And he who dies 
at the extremest old age will be brought into 
the same condition with him who died prema- 
turely. 

17. The soul at peace. 

Wilt thou one day, O my soul, be good 

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SELECTIONS — MARCUS AURELIUS 

and simple, all one, all naked, more manifest 
than the body which surrounds thee? Wilt 
thou never enjoy an affectionate and con- 
tented disposition ? Wilt thou never be full 
and without a want of any kind, longing for 
nothing more, nor desiring anything, either 
animate or inanimate, for the enjoyment of 
pleasures ? nor yet desiring time wherein thou 
shalt have longer enjoyment, or place, or 
pleasant climate, or society of men with whom 
thou mayst live in harmony ? Wilt thou be 
content with thine actual estate ? happy in all 
thou hast? Convinced that all things are 
thine, that all is well with thee, that all comes 
from the gods, that all must be well which is 
their good pleasure, and which they bring to 
pass for the salvation of the living whole, 
good, just and beautiful, from which all things 
have their being, their unity and their scope, 
and into which they are received at dissolu- 
tion for the production of new forms of being 
like themselves ? Wilt thou never be such 
that thou shalt so dwell in community with 
gods and men as neither to find fault with 
them at all, nor to be condemned by them ? 

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GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

1 8. Do not belie your good attributes. 

When you have claimed for yourself the 
attributes good, modest, true, open-minded, 
even-minded, high-minded, take care that you 
do not change these names; and if you should 
lose them quickly return them. And should 
you forfeit them, make haste to reclaim them. 
The open mind, remember, should import 
discriminating observation and attention ; the 
even mind unforced acceptance of the appor- 
tionments of nature; the high mind sovereignty 
of the intelligence over the physical currents, 
smooth or rough, over vainglory, death, or 
any other trial. Keep true to these attributes, 
without pining for recognition of the same by 
others, and a changed man you will enter 
upon a changed life. To go on being what 
you have been hitherto, to lead a life still so 
distracted and polluted, were stupidity and 
cowardice indeed, worthy of the mangled 
gladiators who, torn and disfigured, cry out 
to be remanded till to-morrow, to be flung 
once more to the same fangs and claws. Enter 
your claim then to these few attributes. And 

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SELECTIONS— MARCUS AURELIUS 

if stand fast in them you can, stand fast — as 
one translated indeed to Islands of the Blessed. 
But if you find yourself falling away and 
beaten in the fight, be a man and get away to 
some quiet corner, where you can still hold 
on, or in the last resort take leave of life, not 
angrily but simply, freely, modestly, achiev- 
ing at least this much of life, brave leaving of 
it. In order, however, to the remembrance 
of these attributes, it will greatly help you, if 
you keep in mind the gods, and that they 
wish not to be flattered, but wish all reasona- 
ble beings to be made like themselves ; and 
if you remember that what does the work of 
a fig-tree is a fig-tree, and that what does the 
work of a dog is a dog, and that what does 
the work of a bee is a bee, and that what does 
the work of a man is a man. 

19. One universe , one God, one reason , one 

truth. 
All things are interwoven one with the 
other, and are tied together in a sacred bond ; 
and no one thing hardly is unrelated to an- 
other ; since all things are coordinated, and 

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GREEK AND ROMAN STOICISM 

combine to adorn the same universe. For 
there is but one universe made up of all 
things, and one God pervading all, one sub- 
stance and one law, one common reason in 
all intelligent creatures, and one truth ; if so 
be, that there is also one perfection for all 
creatures possessing the same nature and par- 
taking the same reason. 

20. Imitation of Antoninus the way of life and 
comfort in death. 

Take care that you become not too much 
of a Caesar, or be dyed with that dye ; for it 
may happen so. Keep yourself simple, good, 
sincere, grave, unaffected, a friend to justice, 
God-fearing, considerate, affectionate, and 
strenuous in duty. Struggle to remain such 
as philosophy would have you. Reverence 
the gods and help mankind. Life is short ; 
and the one fruit of this earthly existence is 
a pious disposition, and unselfish acts. Do 
everything as a disciple of Antoninus. Re- 
member his resolute championship of reason, 
his unvarying equability, his holiness, his 
serenity of look, his affability, his dislike of 

268 



SELECTIONS — MARCUS . AURELIUS 

ostentation, his keenness for certitude about 
the facts ; how he would never drop a sub- 
ject until he saw into it thoroughly and un- 
derstood clearly ; how he bore unjust re- 
proaches without a word ; how he was never 
in a hurry ; how he gave no ear to slander ; 
how accurately he scrutinized character and 
action ; not given to reprimand nor frightened 
by clamor, not suspicious nor sophistical ; how 
little contented him in the way of lodging, 
bed, clothes, food and service ; how industri- 
ous and patient he was, how firm and steady 
in his friendships, how tolerant of such as 
openly opposed his views, and how pleased 
if any one pointed out a better course ; finally, 
how religious without a spark of superstition. 
Imitate him in these, that your last hour may 
find you with a conscience as clear as his. 

Recall your true, your sober self; shake 
off the slumber and realize that they were 
dreams that troubled you. Now wide awake 
once more, look on it all as a dream. 




















































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